


Hell is Yourself

by DarkTidings



Series: If You're Going Through Hell [1]
Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Adopted Children, Alternate Season/Series 03, Families of Choice, Friends to Lovers, Mental Health Issues, Rare Pairings, Redemption, Shane Walsh Lives, Sophia Peletier Lives, Suicidal Thoughts, Survival Training
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-18
Updated: 2020-11-25
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:55:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 32
Words: 91,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24251686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkTidings/pseuds/DarkTidings
Summary: Hell is yourself and the only redemption is when a person puts himself aside to feel deeply for another person - Tennessee WilliamsAU: Shane is left for dead in the field on the Greene farm, but ends up saved by a person he's given up for dead.
Relationships: Michonne/Shane Walsh
Series: If You're Going Through Hell [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1783144
Comments: 591
Kudos: 172





	1. Ease the Soul

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Left for dead, Shane finds help in a very unexpected place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Canon through the confrontation between Rick and Shane in the field, except Sophia never was in Hershel's barn.

_Hell is yourself and the only redemption is when a person puts himself aside to feel deeply for another person - Tennessee Williams_

** August 2010 **

Shane stumbles through the forest beyond the Greene farm with so little sense of his surroundings that the only reason he isn't eaten is that the noise and commotion of the farm being swarmed draws everything dead away.

The part of his brain that can't stop cataloging things logically notes blood loss as the root cause, but he's seen enough of mental breakdowns as a deputy to know his fractured mind is just as much a culprit.

A stronger man would have killed himself, rather than being such a coward as to hold an empty gun on his best friend. A better man wouldn't have let himself fall so far in the first place. 

He's a killer, fallen far from his sworn oath to uphold the law. He's still certain Randall was a danger to everyone, but Otis? The man bore the brunt of his terror at what losing Carl would do to his family.

As he lay bleeding from the knife wound, Rick's remorse eating at him like acid, the worst part was realizing Carl found them. The one good thing left of the disaster he and Lori unleashed, and he's tainted Carl's future by his blood on Rick's hands.

He flinched when the gun fired, but it wasn't ending his sorry existence. A heavy weight and awful stench fell on him. It's the paradox of his world: a dead body kept the herd from noticing him, and the dead bastard managed to play paramedic by putting pressure on his wound.

He stumbles into a clearing and nearly falls on his face. The blood's slick around the wound, which hurts like hell, but Rick's no bladesman. Shane can breathe, despite the pain, and he's not dead, so it missed his heart and lungs. If it got his liver, he guesses he'll find out if it's critical or not if he survives the next few days.

If Rick had aimed for the gut instead, he would be dead. Gut wound was deadly enough before the world ended.

But something's damaged and he's got to either stop the bleeding or find a place to end it so he doesn't turn into something that eats the living.

The house in the clearing is just a hunting cabin. There's a hand pump in the yard with a bucket still hanging off it. Despite the pain it causes to work the pump, he manages a bucket and dumps it unceremoniously over his head.

The cold water washes away the blood on his face and a good portion of the fetid walker blood from his front. He begins pumping a new bucket, but a noise from the cabin draws his attention.

He briefly considers replacing the magazine in his Glock, but whatever death wish he has tonight hasn't faded yet from when he ejected and palmed it to his pocket before drawing on Rick. 

Suicide by cop, what a _fucking coward_ he is.

But it's not a walker nor a pissed off resident who emerges into the dawning light.

"Mister Walsh?"

And if that ain't karma telling him he's on a roll of shitty life choices? The little girl he swore was dead, that he protested so furiously against continuing to search for, is standing in the doorway. She's trembling like a leaf.

"Sophia?"

He slumps to the ground, whatever sustained him this far running out of steam.

Sophia scurries forward, panicked. "You can't stay out here, Mister Walsh."

She tugs ineffectively at his arm, gasping when it dislodges his hand. "You're bleeding."

"Yeah." He has to find some energy somewhere. Staying right here means either he bleeds out or gets eaten. He has no right to put the girl through watching either, nor the danger of someone his size loose as a walker.

"Can you fill the bucket again and help me clean off more of the mess?"

Being given a direction helps. She works the pump quickly despite her skinny arms, pouring the water carefully over him. He hisses at the cold and she apologizes.

"Don't apologise, sweetheart. You're helping me, and that's braver than I've been for a long time."

It's true. She could have stayed hidden. He isn't sure he would have bothered with the cabin. Instead, she's outside, a terrified child still doing the right thing no matter what.

She bites her lip and nods, filling the bucket again and just as carefully pouring the water over him. He starts to shiver, but at least the worst of the blood and gore. 

"Can you get up? The cabin is real secure. Nothing can get in."

His mind skitters across the thought of how long has this little girl been there and what's terrorized her for her to state that so firmly.

"Give me a minute. Is there water inside?"

She nods. "A smaller pump like this one at the sink. There's sort of a bathroom, but it's a camp toilet like you made at the quarry, just fancier."

When he gets to his feet, she follows, carrying the bucket. The trek from the pump to the door feels like ten miles, but he makes it.

"There's a chair at the table."

He makes it that far, groaning as he sits. Sophia slides two braces across the door, but the room doesn't go dark. That's when he realizes there's a kerosene lamp lit on the table.

He takes a look around to assess his surroundings and sees there are windows, but they're tightly covered. That explains why he didn't see any light outside.

The cabin is one big room, with a curtain in one corner that he figures must be the mentioned camp toilet. There's a bunk bed in one corner, the table he sits at with one chair, and a sink between the door and a tiny wood burning stove.

Sophia takes the bucket to the sink and half fills the bucket. She sets it near his feet and brings a kettle over and dumps hot water into the bucket too.

"At least it won't be cold," she says. She refills the kettle and puts it back on the stove. "I remembered you said at camp to always boil water you don't know is safe before drinking."

She points to a bookshelf near him. One shelf holds water bottles, while the rest hold a variety of dry goods. "I refilled the ones I drank because there weren't many."

Shane's half-stunned that his cautions to the adults sank in so readily for the girl. "Good ideas there. Smart girl."

She smiles so readily at the faint praise that he's even more ashamed of his doubt in looking for her. She brings him a worn dish towel, obviously intending he get himself clean or treat the wound or both.

Shane works his way gingerly out of the long sleeve shirt, which Sophia spirits away to the sink. It's such a mimicry of Carol that it takes him a minute to eye his shirt. As painful as it was to get the button up off, he doesn't want to try to pull the T-shirt over his head.

He fumbles for his pocket knife, using the blade to cut through the thin cotton fabric. He has to unbunch it from where he's been using it to apply pressure, so blood seeps down his abdomen. 

The good news is that it's slowing. No arteries, no veins, he thinks, trying to remember his first responder training despite the exhaustion and blood loss.

"Is there any kind of first aid kit?"

She nods, going to pull a battered white metal box out from under the bottom bunk. She brings it to the table and opens it, showing it still contains most supplies. He just hopes they aren't so old the adhesives won't stick.

He's about to irrigate the wound, though. Reaching for one of Sophia's bottles of boiled water, he groans as he tries to flush out the wound.

"I can help."

Sophia is pale, trembling a little still, but she's squared her shoulders. He considers saying no, but the angle is hard and he doesn't want to waste her water.

"Alright. I gotta make sure there's no dirt or worse in there. Can you pour the water for me? Tilt it at an angle and pour slow and gentle."

She nods, hands actually getting steadier once she's got something to do. Having water poured into an open wound feels exactly like he expects it to, and he grips the chair and nearly bites his lip through not to curse and scare the girl. She's equally careful with the second bottle.

"Should I do another one? There's just pinkish water coming back out now. No more dark bits."

The wound is bleeding faster again due to the cleaning, so he reaches for a gauze packet and tears it open. He places it and the thin dish towel over the wound and applies pressure. "Not just yet. You did good. You ever had a first aid lesson?"

She shakes her head. "I wanted to take the Red Cross class, but my dad said it was too expensive for a kid."

"Well, we'll start now. This is a puncture wound, so you apply pressure to stop the bleeding. Then you clean it with sterile water, which you just did. Next we need to clean the skin."

"Alcohol wipe?" she suggests, peering in the box.

"Yeah." He reaches for a packet, but realizes he can't one-hand it. Sophia gives him a shy smile before tearing one open and handing it to him.

He lifts the dish towel, checking that the bleeding isn't increasing, before cleaning the skin around it. He hisses as it burns, but perseveres. She passes him a second wipe when he motions.

Shane takes a moment to let the pain subside. "Next, antibiotic ointment."

Sophia plucks the tube out of the box, obviously familiar with Neosporin. "Mama always puts it on the bandage."

"Normally, that's a good way, but we have to keep this moist. So we'll need to apply the ointment before putting a wet dressing over it. Tear open the big gauze pad and be careful not to touch the side that'll touch the skin."

Sophia handles it with all the care of a bomb tech, movements careful and precise and drizzles water on the pad. She layers ointment over the wound, probably more than is needed, before maneuvering the moist gauze in place.

"Perfect. Think you can tape it while I hold it?"

"Yeah." 

Once the pad is taped into place, Shane takes a moment to catch his breath. He rolls the dish towel so the bloodied side is inward and applies pressure to make sure any renewed bleeding stops.

"Thanks, Sophia. You made it go a lot faster than me fumbling around."

Sophia smiles again, and he assesses her clearly for the first time. For a girl missing for fifteen days, she's doing remarkably well for a kid he didn't think could survive a night in the woods.

She's in reasonably clean clothes and sneakers better than he remembers her wearing at camp. She hasn't been in the elements for a while, he thinks.

"Are you hungry? Whoever camped here kept it stocked. It's why I stayed here hoping someone would find me. I remembered in a movie they said to stay put so searches aren't going in circles."

"You're right about staying put." He could use sleep more than food, but he knows he better eat. "Yeah, I'm a little hungry."

Her kettle is boiling, so she swoops over to it and pulls bowls down from a shelf. While she works on the food, he rinses the bloody dish towel and cleans up the best he can. By some freak accident, most of the actual gore from the walker missed his pants.

There's water all around his chair, but there's little to be done about it but to let it dry. He wonders how close they are to the farm, but knows he stumbled through the night. It could be half a mile, if he rambled in circles, or it could be five or ten miles.

He smells the oatmeal before it arrives. She puts a bowl in front of him, along with a cup of something orange.

"Tang. Not good as orange juice, but it's okay."

She retreats for her own bowl and cup, coming back to the table. She unfolds a camp chair and stares at her food while he opts for the drink since he knows he's dehydrated.

"Is everyone else still alive?" she asks at last, not looking up.

He's surprised it's taken this long for her to ask.

"Last I saw, yeah. We were at a farm while Daryl tried to track you down. It got overrun by a big herd. Bunch of cars left. Heard the motorcycle."

He hopes he's telling the truth, although he's as lost as she is for now.

"Okay. Do you know where they are going?"

"Maybe Fort Benning again." He can't imagine any other destination, but his own insane behavior probably means they'll avoid the place just on principle.

"But we might not find them."

Shane considers sugar coating the truth. He's no longer welcome, for good reason, but the girl needs her mama. "We might not, but I'll do my best."

She picks up her spoon and starts to eat. "If you want to sleep some, I can get things ready to go."

He follows suit, eating the oatmeal methodically. He glances at the battered old clock that seems to be keeping decent time. "Good plan. Can you wake me at noon?"

She nods. "There's some clothing in the trunk by the beds. Hunting stuff. Don't know if it's the right size."

"Thanks."

They finish nearly the same time, so she takes their dishes to the sink while he drinks another bottle of water and takes two Tylenol from the kit. As soon as he's done, he wraps the compression bandage around his chest to keep the dressing in place. 

A search of the trunk reveals military surplus clothing, but the olive green shirt fits him well enough. He takes a pair of the camo pants behind the curtain and changes, leaving his boots by the bed. The pants are a little too long, actually, but they can be tucked in his boots.

"Sophia."

She turns from where she's drying the dishes with another worn dish towel. "Yes, sir?"

After reloading the magazine, he lays his Glock on the table, along with his two spare magazines. "Do you know anything about guns?"

Surprisingly, she nods. "My dad took me to the range a couple times. His boss's daughter was my age and liked to shoot."

"Do you know this one?"

She shakes her head, so he walks her through the steps. He can't see any situation here where she would need more than the first magazine, but better safe than sorry.

Once he's confident she's got it down pat, he leaves the gun on the table and settles into the bunk.

Sophia quietly returns to her self-set tasks while he tries to sleep. He can't keep her safe if he's exhausted.

He's got a general idea of the roadways around, so if they can reach one, he can get them sorted. He just has to stay healthy enough long enough to get Sophia somewhere safe.

His Grandma Jean would call this a sign, that he lived through the attempt to make his best friend kill him to reach this place. Saving Sophia won't salvage his soul, but at least it might ease Rick's for losing her in the first place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This plot bunny bit me amidst a big case of writer's block on RBM. I blame migraine med induced nap, plus an idea that it's more of a challenge to write a redemption arc for season two Shane. ;)
> 
> Part of my avoidance of season two is Sophia's death, which I loathe, loathe, loathe. But hey, that's why AU exists.
> 
> Probably not a huge story in the end, but I don't have it fully fleshed out so... Who knows.


	2. Underestimated

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shane wakes to find evidence that the world in general has severely underestimated Sophia Peletier.

**August 2010**

Months of being hyper aware brings Shane awake instantly when his name is called. It takes him about five seconds to reconnect the dots.

"Everything good, Sophia?" he asks, easing himself to a sitting position and ducking his head so he doesn't crack his skull open on the metal of the top bunk.

"Yes, sir." She's holding out a silver pouch that smells far more delicious than anything he’s had in days. "It's a chicken fajita camping pouch. There were a bunch in some buckets so I put them all in our bags, plus the other food. But the directions say these just need water, no cooking."

She's solemn, waiting on his approval, and he wishes he beat Ed just a little worse than he did.

"Smells great. Kind of like an MRE, right?" He's seen the pouches in the camping aisle at the store, but preferred to cook when he camped.

She giggles. "They taste better."

He shovels a big bite in his mouth and nods while he chews. "You're right there. What all do we have to carry?" he asks, figuring it'll make her less nervous to explain.

"This is your bag." She nudges a decent sized hiking backpack. "It was here, laying on the top bunk. I put half the water in yours and half in mine, and it's the heavy part. There's enough food for both of us for ten days if we eat three meals and longer if we don't.

"Plus a change of clothes each. I couldn't get the blood out of your clothes, so I put some of the hunting clothes in your bag."

He's actually kind of glad she couldn't and wishes he was aware enough to tell her not to try before he slept. The other bag looks like a gym bag of some sort, and he's grateful the bag she's designated for him won't have a strap across his chest.

"Sounds like good planning. Any necessities other than food, water, and clothes?" He's mulling what they'll need if they can't find the others quickly.

Sophia unfastens the top of his bag and pulls out a gallon ziplock bag with a little smile. It contains the remainder of the first aid kit supplies, a roll of toilet paper, a Bic lighter, box of matches, and bottle of bug spray.

He laughs, although it makes his chest ache. "Good thinking. That the only toilet paper?"

She shakes her head. "I've got two rolls in my bag. Plus more matches, bug spray, and sunscreen. I've got another baggie with some of the silverware. I wrapped one of the kitchen knives in clean dish towels."

"Taking the kettle too?" It's tied to the strap of her bag. 

"It wouldn't fit in my bag. I put the pot and a couple of the bowls in there."

"Good planning. 'Fess up. You were a Girl Scout, right?" She's so carefully formal he's not sure how she'll take the teasing.

"I just thought of what Mama would pack." Her expression turns sad. "Do you think they'll keep her safe?"

"You didn't get to see it, but looked like she and Daryl were keeping an eye on each other." As much as he personally doesn't care for the redneck, if he and Carol both got off the farm, Shane doesn't see Daryl abandoning Carol. That type of man’s the ‘til I die’ kind of loyal.

Sophia thinks that over, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth, and nods at last. "He won't forget her."

That alarms Shane. Even in his rage-fueled moments, he couldn't say Rick forgot Sophia. But can he really defend him when he left her in the first place? From a child's point of view, that's got to be unforgivable.

He tries, if nothing else to soothe Sophia. "He set up a search grid for you. Things got a little crazy because Carl was shot while we were searching that first day."

"Carl was shot?"

Based on the alarm in her voice, that didn't soothe her.

"He's fine now. It was an accident, and we found someone who could take care of him. He was exploring the farm and kicking up a fuss about not helping search for you."

“And probably getting into trouble, knowing Carl.”

Shane thinks about finding him with the gun and agrees wholeheartedly with that. “Yeah, just a bit.”

He’s finished with the pouch, so she takes it and the spoon to tidy up. Although he thinks she’s been fairly thorough in packing what gear can tide them over until they find more supplies or the others, she’s a kid. 

He gets to his feet, testing out his body’s range of movement. He feels the raw ache of the wound in his chest, but he doesn’t want to risk suturing it closed even if he can find supplies to do it with. One of the other deputies got stabbed once, insisted on stitches, and then ended up with a rat bastard of an infection they like to never have cured.

He shuffles to the trunk he got clothes out of earlier and goes through the personal effects of the cabin owner. A locked box at the bottom yields to careful prying with his knife, and he laughs. “Guess I won’t have to look too far for a gun for you, Sophia.”

She comes over to peer in the box. “Is that even a real gun?”

“Yeah. Small .22 pistol. Lot of folks use them for target shooting because the ammo’s cheap.” He checks out the Walther P22, going through the motions of verifying it’s in good shape. He’ll need to fire it to be really sure, and he’ll do that before handing it off to the girl, but it seems to be a solid little gun.

Best part is that there’s three boxes of ammo for it, which is more than he has for his Glock right now.

“We’ll still have to find a holster of some sort for you. None of that cramming it in your pocket or waistband. It’s a small caliber gun, but it’ll take down the dead just fine since their heads are half rotted already.”

“Okay. Want me to put the ammunition in my bag?” 

He hands the boxes over and she trots off to wiggle them in with her gear. Despite telling her she can’t pocket the gun, he does just that in one of the pouches on the hunting pants. It’s unloaded and he’s not the one needing to avoid learning bad habits.

There’s a decent but small hunting knife stored between two sets of clothing, and he takes that out, looking to see if Sophia’s actually wearing a belt. She isn’t, so he sets the knife out to pack for now, until he can find her something to put it on.

There’s not a lot else worth carrying for the weight, but he does open the deck of cards to make sure they aren’t nudies and pockets those when they’re standard fare. Since Sophia’s already packed the dish towels, he eyes the two cotton T-shirts left in the trunk and the single bandana and snags them all. He stuffs the T-shirts in his bag, figuring they can become bandages if nothing else.

“It’s gonna be hot as hell out there, so maybe we should tie your hair back a bit. Keep it off your face and your vision clear,” he suggests.

She takes the gray bandana and eyes it for a minute before folding it diagonally and fastening it over her blonde hair. “No sweat in my eyes, maybe.”

“Good call.” He closes the trunk and picks up the knife. “Let’s see if we can strap this on your bag until we can find a belt for you.”

She goes to the shelves that hold the kitchen supplies and returns with a roll of twine. “Probably should take it with us too, right?”

“Yeah.” He cuts a length of twine and secures the knife’s sheath to her bag so that she should be able to draw the knife. 

The metal tea kettle catches his eye. She’s right that having it is a good idea, but it could be noisy. He goes and takes one of the pillow cases off a pillow and brings it back to tie around the kettle with another length of twine.

“Your bag gets too heavy, you gotta let me know, okay?” If he were at full health, he’s not sure he would let her carry what’s over half the weight, but he’s got to limit the pull on his chest for a while.

“I will. But I’m stronger than I look.” 

She’s left two cups of Tang on the table since the water’s packed and quietly points them out before heading behind the curtain. He’s glad to see she’s planning ahead, since it’s a lot harder for her to pee in the woods than it would be if it were Carl with him. He drinks both cups, downing the packet of Tylenol she left out as well.

He thinks about the group, and whether or not they’ll find another base to search the area. They can’t stay here on the off-chance they might be found, especially since he knows he has to find some antibiotics and better medical supplies. There’s a pocket sized notebook and a pencil stub on the shelf with the dishes Sophia’s leaving behind, so he grabs it and opens it to a new page.

“SP is safe. Going west as planned. KC goal if not found.”

That should be clear enough if Rick or Daryl finds it, he hopes, without putting too much information out there in case an unfriendly group does.

Sophia reemerges and looks at the notebook and reaches for the pencil. She draws a jaunty little cartoon bear under his terse words. “There. I draw those on everything, so if Mama sees that, she’ll know what it’s about.”

He nods and visits the little toilet corner himself before pulling on his boots and lacing them up, grimacing as the position pushes against the wound. He checks it carefully, but it hasn’t bled through the gauze pad yet, so they can wait to change bandages later and spare supplies for now.

“Alright, Sophia. Let’s see about finding us a way back to what remains of civilization.”

She shoulders her bag, settling the big strap across her chest. The fact that she angles it to put the knife close by gives him hope that keeping her alive and safe won’t be the uphill battle he thought it would be fifteen days ago. 

With his Glock holstered and the magazines returned to his belt, he eases the backpack on and tests the pressure. It’s not ideal, because it does pull at his chest, but at least the wound’s low enough down he should be able to handle the pack. 

He goes to the window shutter and eases it back, assessing what he can see of the yard. “Let me open the door and stay inside until I tell you it’s clear, okay?”

“Yes, sir.”

It was hot in the cabin, like any place in the middle of August, but at least it’s not a damned heat wave like they can get sometimes. He keeps his hand on his gun, eyeing the yard revealed by the open door, but nothing moves. He doesn’t hear anything either, so he ventures out and circles the cabin.

There’s nothing anywhere to be seen or heard, so when he reaches the door again, he taps for Sophia to come out. 

She steps into the sunlight, blinking as her eyes fully adjust, and reaches up to slide an outside latch into place that’s up near the top of the door.

“How often did you leave?” he asks, curious when she’s so careful to lock it up.

“Just twice since I found this place. Once to dump the bag from the toilet and another time to pick some of the muscadines off that vine over there.”

She points toward a trellised arbor that’s overgrown with muscadine vines, fruit hanging off them heavily. It gives him an idea. “How about you go snag that other pillowcase?”

It connects for her too and she grins before going into the cabin. They can’t carry many with them, between the weight and them spoiling, but the pillow case is half full when Shane ties it onto his backpack. Sophia snags two last bunches passing him one and keeping the other for herself.

“Which direction do we go?” she asks. “It kind of looked like a trail that way, but I wasn’t sure if it would go to a road or not.” She points to the north, which does look like an ATV has accessed the property just enough times to wear small ruts.

“And do you remember which way you came from?” He’s not entirely sure if he came from the east or south, because either angle fits how he stumbled to the well pump.

“From behind the muscadines. I didn’t even really see the cabin until I got up to them and realized I knew what they were and they were safe to eat. My grandma had them in her yard and made jelly from them.”

That puts her wandering in from the east. “How long were you here?”

She thinks it over. “All but the first four days. The first night, I slept in a house. There were noises in the night and I hid in a pantry. But there wasn’t much food and no water, so I couldn’t stay there.”

“I think Daryl found that place.” Damn the redneck was so close to the girl’s trail. “You eat some sardines?”

The face she makes is all the answer he really needs. “Yeah. A kid my size lived there before, so I took some clothes. When I was wearing shorts, my legs got all scratched up. They’re boy’s clothes, but they fit.”

It fits with his foggy observation last night that she was dressed differently than when she fled the highway.

“And after that?”

“I found a tree I could climb the second night, but I was getting pretty hungry. Found some mushrooms the third morning, but they didn’t look like the ones you said were safe to eat, so I kept going. Kept the sun on my shoulder like Mr. Grimes said, but I think I was already too turned around.”

“Glad you listened and didn’t risk the mushrooms.” That is not a death he wishes on anyone, especially not a kid. “Let’s get started and take the trail. It might go further in the woods, but more likely, it’ll lead to a road or a house place where the owners of the cabin lived.”

She falls into step beside him, moving quietly. Then again, when he thinks about it, the girl’s always moved silently as a little mouse compared to all the other children in the quarry camp. Years of avoiding Ed Peletier’s temper, he bets.

“What about the third night?” If she found the cabin on the fourth day, that’s one more night elsewhere.

“A shed on a property like the first one. There were walkers in the house, but they couldn’t get out. There was water there, at least, and I was thirsty enough to drink from the well pump by then. Didn’t get sick though.”

“Well water’s usually a safer bet than creek water, but you did good to be extra careful at the cabin.” The more he compliments her, the more steady her smiles become when she looks his way.

Now that he’s got a good idea of her time out in the open, he tries to think about how far she might have traveled. If she’s certain about going in a single direction, she might have covered three to five miles a day. The abandoned house Daryl found was west of the Greene farm, and Sophia unfortunately kept on a path steadily away from where they were. 

Figuring somewhere between five and ten miles west of the place the redneck discovered, he pulls up a memory of the maps they used for the search grid. There aren’t a lot of roads west of the highway, but there’s a few. Once he can find a road and something to identify it, he remembers enough to get started.

Sophia’s got to be the quietest kid he’s ever spent time with, because she walks beside him, seeming at ease with walking in silence. The sunlight’s dappled through the trees, keeping them from really overheating, thankfully. She finishes the muscadines and tosses the stem, eyeing the ones he’s carrying but not eating with a little frown.

“Alright, I’ll eat.” He pops one of the big fruits into his mouth to show he’s paying attention to the unvoiced criticism.

She looks away then, but he catches the little smile.

He’s not sure what lies ahead, or if he can even keep his promise to find her mama. But from what he’s seen so far, he thinks everyone who ever underestimated Sophia is in for one hell of a surprise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I figure kids like Sophia absorb a lot more from their environment because they have to be so carefully aware of adults around them. Missing a voice inflection can be the difference in safety or not living with a parent like Ed, or what's sometimes worse to kids, a difference in temper being turned on their abused parent for something they did "wrong".
> 
> With Ed being at least a poser prepper, I imagine he would be the type to blather on about how things are supposed to be and Sophia absorb that. Then she would take those same skills and turn it toward someone who is proving he knows a bit about survival in the quarry camp with Shane. 
> 
> The show never really goes into Shane's background, but he displays several skills on the "redneck scale" that never get explored, like mushroom foraging and the frog gigging, so my headcanon of him, especially for this story, is a bit of a good ole Southern boy with all the hunting and fishing background common to the rural South. We'll figure out how Rick missed out on them another chapter. :)


	3. Temporary Luxury

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A small peanut farm offers the chance for Sophia to learn more ways to keep herself safe.

** August 2010 **

The sun’s drifting west enough that Shane thinks about two hours have passed when the rugged trail finally reaches the edge of a field so similar to the one at the Greenes that he has to do a double take.

But the house in the distance is a little stone building nothing like the ramshackle old farm house belonging to Hershel Greene. As easy as stumbling across the Greene farm might make his mission, he doubts that place will be safe to return to anytime soon.

“Look at that, Sophia. I’m betting whoever lived here owned the cabin.”

She looks ahead, curious. She’s been a trooper in the woods, keeping pace with him and not asking to stop even when he suggested they share a bottle of water. The day’s heat is already compounded by humidity, and he knows she’ll dehydrate faster than he will, normally.

“Do you think anyone’s still here?”

He shakes his head. “It’s overgrown too much. If someone was still here, they would have either cut the grass or there would at least be trails where they went between the house and barn and fields.”

Unlike Hershel’s farm, with pastures of cattle around and only a personal use garden, this one is set up for growing crops. He can see an orchard beyond the house, probably peaches considering they’re in Georgia, and the field they’re at the edge of is definitely peanuts. Shane’s certainly seen enough of those growing in his years in King County.

“So what are we going to do?”

He likes that she’s not rushing off, but checking on the plan before moving onward.

“We’re going to take this carefully. Right before the other farm fell, our people came across some real bad guys. Tried to kill Rick, Glenn, and the farmer we were staying with. Not everyone we meet is gonna be friendly, you understand?”

“Yes, sir.” 

And he can see in those crystal blue eyes that, yes, more than Carl can comprehend at this stage of life, Sophia does understand what he’s trying to impart to her. Daryl Dixon was rattled as hell when he came out of that shed, and Shane can still hear the echo of his statement that their women would wish they were dead.

“The man that survived attacking Rick and Glenn said something to Daryl that really scared him about what they would do to women and girls. Men you don’t know, Sophia, you run. You run like hell no matter what happens to me, you got it?”

She nods, comprehension advancing from the general strange men are dangerous concept to the one he wants her to have, about exactly what type of dangerous. He doesn’t want to terrify her, but he wants her alert and aware.

That accomplished, he scans the fields and farm ahead of them, assessing his best approach. The farm might have a vehicle, if they’re lucky. There will be something to identify where they are. He needs more information to make a better plan.

Like many agricultural fields, this one is bordered by a row of trees. He points at the trees to the east versus the ATV ruts that lead to a dirt farm road to the west. “Easy route is to keep following the tracks, but the safer one is to stick to the trees.”

“To keep hidden until we know if anyone’s here.”

“Yeah.” With him dressed in the olive green T-shirt and camo pants, he’ll blend in easily. By luck, Sophia’s clothing choices from her first safe haven are jeans so worn they’re more gray than black and a gray JROTC T-shirt that’s slightly too large for her thin frame.

She falls in step behind him when he leads them from one treeline to the next. He keeps an ear out for anything approaching, knowing the girl’s relying solely on him at the moment. It’s a long hike to the farmyard, with the peanut field being at least forty acres. Through the treeline, Shane can see an identical field with its abandoned crop slowly growing toward maturity.

There’s no more cover once they reach the fence that surrounds the farmyard. It’s a simple rail fence, used more as a border than a deterrent to anyone entering the property. He studies the farmyard again now that he’s closer in. There are three buildings: the little stone house, a big equipment barn, and a pole barn further off that holds the really big farm equipment like the harvester.

“What do you see, Sophia?” It’s a game he used to play with Carl, teaching the boy to observe a situation through a cop’s eyes. Rick never liked it and Lori loathed it, but he knows it teaches valuable lessons now.

“Lots of weeds and tall grass everywhere. No vehicles out in the yard.” She squints in the hot sunshine, shielding her eyes. “Don’t think there are walkers here, not outside at least.”

“Why’s that?” He knows what she sees, at least what he would take note of.

“There are chickens loose. If there were walkers, they would be there trying to eat them.”

“Smart girl. Always, always pay attention to animals in the area if you think it might not be safe. They’ll spook faster and have better senses, usually. Except for cats. Those crazy little bastards will just sit there and stare down anything wanting to eat them.”

Sophia giggles, covering her mouth to keep the sound soft. “You don’t like cats?”

“I like cats just fine. But they’re fearless most of the time, because they’re a predator themselves. Never a good barometer of what’s going on. Birds and prey animals like deer are always a better bet.”

“What about dogs?”

“Dogs are always a mixed bag on that. Some spook, some stand their ground, and some would turn over the family valuables for a belly rub. But if they do spook, pay attention. Something tells me most dogs are going to flee from walkers.”

The ones that didn’t run? Shane’s pretty sure those are probably gone by now under the process of survival of the fittest. Dogs who can’t assess the difference between people and the voracious caricatures of them will end up as snacks. No point in telling the girl that.

She absorbs the input about dogs and returns to studying the farmyard. “One of the barn doors is open and it’s closer than the house. Would we try there first?”

“That’s my plan. Can see from here that it’s more of an equipment barn than one for animals, so hopefully not a lot of hiding places for anything we don’t want finding us.”

Or reasons for a walker to wander in, since it won’t have the leftover smells of farm animals that never leave a barn used for housing livestock. He can see a tractor through the roll-up door that’s open, but the other two doors are still drawn down. It’s no more than a hundred feet to that barn, so he climbs the fence and waits on Sophia to join him.

“Keep your knife close, alright? If anything does come at you, you’ve got to hit the head, so try to trip it or knock it down. That’ll fix the height difference.” 

He taps his temple, glad for once that his buzz cut shows skull anatomy better. “This is the softest spot on the skull. Easier to hit than the eye, but that works too. Don’t aim for the bony parts like the top unless you have to.”

She looks terrified at the thought, but once again, he sees those shoulders square up when she gets information on how to handle a situation. She pulls the knife out of the sheath, even as he unholsters his Glock.

“Stay behind me.”

She’s whisper-quiet as she follows across the open space. The weeds brush against their clothing and wild blackberry vines grip at the fabric. No one’s been here for at least the whole summer, he thinks, not with those so well established.

He pauses at the door to let his eyes adjust to the dimmer light inside, glancing around. He’s right that there’s really no hiding place for anyone, dead or alive. It’s just a big, open room housing the farm’s smaller equipment, like the tractor they could see from the field. Toolboxes, discarded parts, and farm implements line the walls.

The other parts of the barn, the ones with the closed doors, provide parking spots for a big fifth-wheel travel trailer and a fairly expensive bass boat. He edges around to make sure nothing’s behind the travel trailer that he can’t see.

“All clear in here, but we check the inside of this too, if we can.”

Sophia’s still calm and trusting, so he leads her to where she can see in windows. “This can go two ways. Person probably wouldn’t be hiding in there because they would end up dying of heat stroke closed up like that. But a walker?”

“A walker won’t care about the heat,” she finishes.

He nods and raps on the side of the camper, keeping it fairly quiet. He wants to alert anything inside the camper, not the whole damned farm. After he counts to sixty in his head, he repeats the gesture. When nothing else comes, he tests the door and finds it locked. 

“Smart farmer. We used to bitch at people all the time for leaving campers and RVs unlocked in their yards or barns.”

“Like how they do the things on the news about not leaving your car running in the morning when it’s cold so it can warm up?”

“Exactly that. Always created a bunch of paperwork for thefts we probably weren’t going to solve and could have been prevented.” He sighs, scanning the barn one last time. His chest fucking throbs, so they need to get a move on.

The barn puts them close enough to the house now that he can get a better look at it. It’s one-story, maybe a thousand square feet and probably twice as old as he is, by the architectural style. He can’t see the back from the barn door, but the minimal front porch has a pair of rocking chairs and a bunch of dead house plants.

“See any movement in the windows?” he asks Sophia. All of the ones on the two sides of the house he can see have the curtains pulled back. Whoever lived here liked their sunlight, he guesses.

She watches intently for a few minutes and shakes her head.

“We’re going to aim for the front door. Just in case, when we get there, you’re going to stay just off the porch, to the right, while I go up on the porch, okay?”

“Like on TV when the second cop stays a little behind?”

“Just like that. But remember what I told you about running?” She nods, and he prays she’s brave enough to hold to that promise. He doesn’t intend to let anyone, living or dead, take him down, but he’s injured and nowhere near where he should be mentally.

There’s so little cover that he just crosses the farmyard at a run, hearing Sophia keep pace behind him. He reaches the porch, glancing to make sure she stays put where he told her to be, and steps into position to the left of the door before rapping on the glass in the screen door.

Through the living room window, he can hear the muffled sounds of growling. He sighs, but at least a walker inside means probably no one living. He steps to the window and peers inside, seeing a long-dead woman in a pink house dress bumping her way around. She was probably in her sixties or more when she died and looks to weigh about a hundred pounds on her heaviest day.

She’s caught in the kitchen area he can see, the long bar dividing the room keeping her trapped due to some sort of microwave cart that wouldn’t stop a living, thinking human, but acts like a bit of a stopper to a dead one. He raps on the window this time, waiting to see if anything comes from the hallway opening he can just glimpse, but nothing stirs. 

With any luck, she was home alone when she died, but he doubts a woman of that age ran the farm solo. They’ll have to keep alert for a husband or farm hand, just in case.

He signals Sophia to come up on the porch. “How much do you really want to learn, kiddo?”

She needs to learn to take down a walker, and this petite grandmotherly type will be good practice. But he’s also not going to force the issue. Even he’s not that big of an asshole.

Sophia looks through the window, spotting the walker and bites at her lip, knowing what he’s asking. “You’ll help me?”

“Of course.” Since she’s agreed, he opens the screen door and reaches up to slide the stopper out to prop it open. If they have to leave in a hurry, he doesn’t want it slowing them down. “I’ll go in first. I’m going to knock it down and hold it for you. Where should you stab?”

“Right here.” She taps her temple, imitating him from before. He eases his backpack off and sits it on the porch, and she follows suit with her bag. He reaches for the long-handled hand cultivator left against the porch rail after tucking his gun in his holster.

She tightens her grip on the knife as he tests the knob. It turns, not surprising on a country house, and he eases it open, keeping a close eye on the walker granny. Once the door’s open, he enters first, drawing the attention of the growling creature. With meals on legs coming its way, it finally hits the gap just right to get past the cart and stumbles toward them.

Before it can be a danger to either of them, he flattens it onto the floor by sweeping its legs with the handle of the tool. Its head strikes the bar with a sickening crunch, but it’s still moving. He plants one boot on a flailing arm and uses the tool to pin the other arm. The walker can kick, but she can’t fight his weight.

“I got her, Sophia. Try it, if you can.”

Convincing her she can put a knife in what once was a living being is harder than her shooting it, but it’s the more important skill. She may not always have a gun or ammo, but picking up something that can bludgeon or stab? That’s a lot easier to find, but harder on the psyche to actually do.

She stumbles forward and tags the walker right where he told her to. The hunting knife sinks in easily, and he sees her shudder. 

He knows what she’s just felt: that indescribable moment when the knife breaks through bone into soft brain matter beyond. It’s enough to stall her, even endanger her, to experience it in a fight.

“You okay, Sophia?”

She nods, not quite looking up at him, and pulls her knife out of the dead woman’s skull. She reaches for a roll of paper towels on the bar counter and cleans the blade, tears slipping down her face.

“Shit, kiddo, don’t cry.” He fucking pushed her too far, too fast. She’s a damned little girl, not a rookie cop.

“S’okay. It’s just…” she sighs, unable to find the words. She rubs at her face with a clean paper towel. “Gross sounds like a little kid. I know she’s not alive anymore.”

“First time I had to kill one that wasn’t with my gun, I vomited right outside the front door. No shame in your instincts telling you it ain’t right to put a knife in someone.” Hell, shooting them’s no picnic either, but at least then you don’t feel the reverberation through your body of the weapon’s impact into rotting flesh.

She studies the walker on the floor for a minute, and he moves the cultivator and his foot so he’s not crushing the body. “Sure it wasn’t the smell that made you throw up?”

That’s when he’s more sure that the kid’s going to be alright. If she can push past the discomfort and crack a joke, she’s already halfway to the coping mechanisms first responders use.

“That might have been a good part of it,” he admits. 

Sophia looks around the small living room and goes to fetch a little afghan from the back of the couch. She drapes it over the walker’s head and upper torso with a sigh. It doesn’t really hide the damage, but it disguises it enough that they aren’t staring right at the poor corpse.

“I guess she’s the only one in here or we would know by now, right?” she asks.

“Yeah. Made enough noise to alert anything.” He hefts the long-handled tool anyway and steps into the narrow hallway opening. There’s just two bedrooms, one on either side of a pristinely clean bathroom.

He clears both bedrooms, glad that the residents weren’t clutter collectors like half the old folks he’s come across. There’s nothing dangerous in either, not even the closets and he sees no movement aside from chickens outside any of the windows. He shuts the front door and locks it after sliding their bags inside. It’ll give them a bit of a respite to search the house. He leaves the cultivator near the door.

With any luck, the woman is the type who never tosses old meds and forgot to finish an antibiotic prescription at some point. 

“I can hear the fridge humming,” Sophia says, head tilted as she listens.

“She must have had a generator out here. Probably propane if the fridge is still running after this long.” He steps to the kitchen window and sure enough, he can see the beige metal box that commonly houses non-portable generators and a big propane tank beyond it. He can also see the corner of a screened porch.

He flips a light switch, but those don’t work. “Must have it hooked up to just run the essentials to save on fuel.” 

Just to be fully safe, he carefully opens the back door, but there’s nothing on the screened porch but wicker patio furniture on one side and a big chest freezer on the side nearest the generator. He lifts the lid and sure enough, it’s still working and about half full of food. 

When he steps back into the house, Sophia’s running water in the sink, just idly watching as it cascades over her finger. When she snatches her hand back with a grimace, he realizes she was testing the hot water heater to see if it was working.

“I know we need to get on with searching, kiddo, but if there’s hot water, we might need a good cleanup while we’ve got it.” She’s been making do with sponge baths for days, he suspects, and he can’t imagine using that bucket and towel got him anywhere near clean enough with an open chest wound.

When it earns him a bright smile, he knows it’s the right decision. 

“How about you go see if the shower works?”

She grabs her bag and scampers into the bathroom quickly enough to confirm she wanted the temporary luxury of hot running water, but wasn’t willing to ask for it.

They can’t stay, both because they need to look for the others and because farms like this are bound to be targeted by men like Randall’s group. But he can at least give her this much of a break from the hell she’s survived the last few weeks.

With a sigh, he sets himself to a thorough search of the house for clues on where they are and where they need to go next.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is not pacing fast at all! :)
> 
> I figure poor Sophia deserves a good, hot shower after 15 days in the woods. Since the Greenes still had a generator going, I'm deciding other farms could too.


	4. What if He's Wrong

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sophia and Shane make a discovery that improves their odds.

** August 2010 **

Shane’s lucky in his search of the house. It’s not unexpected, because it’s not the first time he’s conducted a search where people kept their old maps in the house somewhere when they got the new map for their glove box.

After he finds the maps and a bank statement with the address on the desk in the corner of the living room, he rolls the walker into the living room rug and tugs it out to the back porch. It pulls on his chest like a bitch, but the relief from the stench once it is gone helps. Then again, that might be the can of Lysol he finds under the sink before he washes his hands.

He’s got the exact time and date now, borrowing a slim ladies watch from the dresser in the bedroom. It’s a more expensive piece than the little plastic Timex on the body, but based on the care taken with the watch and his mental calendar, it’s correct. One of them should have a timepiece, and he kicks himself for getting slack with the good one he wore on duty. It’s probably back in his duffel in the Greene farmhouse.

August fourteenth, just after three in the afternoon. 

He sighs. Less than three months since Rick was shot, and not long past two months since the world went to shit.

He's gathered a .22 rifle from the rack in the bedroom. The cop side of him abhors the unguarded gun. The practical side recognizes that it's probably used for pest control and needs to be near at hand. The Remington is a decent addition to their collection, especially with two more boxes of ammo.

He hears the water shut off in the bathroom, so he resumes his search of the house. He’s finished the living room, so he starts on the kitchen, which is usually the gold mine for most households for anyone over fifty. He finds the junk drawer and laughs to himself, almost wondering if there’s some roadmap for “put junk drawer here” in Southern households.

Sorting through it turns up useful odds and ends. Wire cutters, a screwdriver, two packs of batteries, a Maglite, and a roll of duct tape. He’ll need that tape to shower later himself. He stacks the useful items on the counter and moves through the other drawers.

Nothing else really leaps out at him, until he opens the cabinet next to the fridge and finds the usual drinking glasses on the bottom shelf. Just above them, the shelf’s been turned into a medicine cabinet. He gathers up the bottles, discarding the ones he doesn’t recognize at all or that are of no use to him and Sophia, like the blood pressure medication he remembers Leon mentioning being on.

But that leaves him with assorted over the counter painkillers, Benadryl, and a bottle of Amoxicillin with four capsules left. Just over a day's dose, but it will get him started.

He moves on to the fridge, wondering just what he'll find and starts laughing.

"What's so funny?"

"How long has it been since you had a cold coke?"

Her eyes widen. "Since before schools closed."

"Well, at least she wasn't a diet drinker. Dr. Pepper or Sprite?"

"Dr. Pepper, please."

He passes her a can and takes one for himself, using it to down one of the amoxicillin and two ibuprofen. She drinks about half the can in a few gulps, which results in an impressive burp. She giggles, clapping a hand over her mouth, and he salutes her with his can.

While he's finishing his drink, he pokes around the cabinets near the stove until he locates the foil and saran wrap. He puts both boxes with the other collected items.

"I'm going to need your help to tape this over the bandage so I can shower."

She nods and eyes the counter. "Duct tape?"

"Yeah. Broke my arm once and had to tape trash bags over the cast to shower. Works like a charm to keep water out."

He sheds his shirt and unwinds the pressure bandage. There's some spotting appearing on the gauze now, so he'll need to change the dressing.

Sophia eyes it warily. "There's a box of first aid supplies under the sink. No medicine cabinet, but I guess you found where she kept it."

Shane stretches out a length of saran wrap, doubles it over, and holds it in place. She reaches for the duct tape, getting the plastic taped down as easily as the bandage before.

He lays his Glock on the counter. "Poke around the house if you want or just take a break and maybe raid the pantry for a snack if there's anything left. I won't take long."

It takes him exactly two seconds in the shower to rate hot water against the covered bandage as exceedingly painful. It makes his shower even shorter, because now he wants a good look at the wound.

Considering he might need a second set of hands, he gets halfway dressed first. He peels away the duct tape and then the medical tape, throwing it all in the trash. 

The wound is starting to look inflamed, despite their best efforts. He can only hope that getting started on antibiotics will hold it off until he finds more. He digs out the homemade kit Sophia found. It's better than the store bought kit, with more tape and bandages.

He cleans and bandages the wound, taking some comfort from the fact that at least it's just seeping blood from too much movement and not pus.

When he returns to the kitchen to put the kit on the bar, Sophia has worked her searching magic again, adding more to their pile. She's eating out of a jar of dill pickles, which she pushes toward him.

"Pickles have vitamin K. They told us in health class that it helps blood clot."

He snags a pickle and takes a bite. "You okay, kiddo?" It's a stupid question in general, but her mood shifted while he was in the bathroom.

"I looked at the watch." She huffs a little sigh. "I missed my birthday."

He figures she means spending it with her mother. "Forgive the dumb question, but I can't remember if you're older or younger than Carl."

Better phrased like that than admit he never really asked, because she was only on his radar because of Carl.

"I'm a couple months older."

"Thirteen, then. We get you back to your mama, I bet she'll do something special." He finishes the pickle and grabs another while checking out her additions.

There's another flashlight, a small can opener, a fireplace lighter, a bag of six tea light candles, a package of baby wipes, and an assortment of packeted food like tuna pouches and granola bars.

"There's other stuff, but things like canned food are really heavy and we need the water more."

He nods. If he was in better shape, or they had a vehicle, more food would be an advantage. 

"We'll eat before we go and save the easier to carry stuff."

"Did you figure out where we are?"

"Yeah." He grabs the state map and opens it, tapping the nearby town. "That's Senoia. It's the town closest to the other farm. The address here is Highway 54, so we're over here."

She looks between the highway and the other town. "So 85 is the one I got lost on?"

"That would be it. We both wandered a bit."

That's an understatement. He estimates at least eight miles west of there they started, depending on exactly where they are on Highway 54.

Sophia traces the route to Columbus with a finger, pausing on the big city. "If they aren't there, if we don't find them, where do we go next?"

Shane studies the map for a minute. "Back home. My home, anyway. Rick's a homebody. He'll go for known territory by winter."

There's a vague memory of Rick leaving someone behind in King County that also fits in his mindscape of why Rick would return.

"Makes sense. And you know everything there, being a deputy."

He nods. "We'll find a place to hole up, leave a message at locations I know he'll go to, and wait. Just like you did at the cabin."

Rick won't be looking for him, but he just can't picture a scenario where come winter, Rick doesn't scurry for known territory like a bear needing to den for the season.

Reassured by the plan, Sophia smiles. "Do people sometimes lock up old cars in sheds if they don't have garages?"

He freezes with a pickle halfway to his mouth. Next to the big pole barn, he remembers seeing a ramshackle old shed. "Yeah, they do."

"I found a mechanic shop receipt that says they left the car in the shed and the keys in the flower pot. It's old, but I was thinking maybe they still have the car."

Shane stuffs the pickle in his mouth and strides over to the desk to snag a set of keys with a rainbow seventies motif VW bug car as the keychain. He disregarded them on initial search with no vehicles in the yard. He dangles them at her and grins. 

"You are a damned genius, kiddo."

She laughs and he slips his shirt back on. He eyes the packs and decides to risk not carrying them for now as he picks up the Glock.

"Let's go inspect a shed."

She follows him gamely, knife in hand. He notes absently that she's more confident of the weapon now, so at least the gorey lesson was worthwhile. They step around the covered body on the back porch and step cautiously outside.

Nothing disturbs them between the house and shed, although they get curious looks from chickens. It's padlocked with a big old Master Lock, and he checks the keychain. Sure enough, in addition to car and house keys, there's a key for the lock.

"You unlock it and pull the door while I cover, okay?"

Sophia takes the keys and does as instructed. He doubts anything is inside, but he's not taking chances.

Once the door's open, he starts to chuckle, then laugh. Emboldened by his amusement, Sophia steps around the door and starts giggling. 

"It's pink!"

And holy shit is she right. Inside the shed is a vintage Volkswagen Beetle. He's seen them painted a lot of interesting ways, even Mary Kay pink, but those were pastels. This Bug is Pepto Bismol pink.

He holsters his gun and grins, sticking his hand out for the keys. "Too bad the walkers aren't scared away by crazy colors."

She giggles even more as he enters the shed, unlocking the door and easing into the driver's seat. It's a stick shift, which he expects since most were. It starts right up with that smaller engine sound unique to the Beetle, sounding more lawn mower than automobile.

If the gas gauge is accurate, it has just over three quarters of a tank. Depending on gas mileage and detours, he thinks that'll get them all the way to Columbus. He puts the car in gear and eases out of the shed, stopping to motion Sophia into the passenger seat.

They circle the farmyard a few times while he listens to the engine and feels how it shifts through the gears he has room to manage. Everything seems reliable, so he pulls to the back porch.

"Hop out and go let me in the front. It'll be easier to load things up from there."

She disappears into the house and he circles again, nosing the car right to the front porch before killing the engine and popping the latch to the trunk.

Sophia grins when she opens the door. "I forgot the trunk's up front. Like Herbie."

"Too bad it's not painted like Herbie."

"Could be worse. Could be painted like tie dye. I saw one like that once. Made my dad rant about hippie drug users for hours."

That doesn't surprise him from what he knew of Ed, but mentioning him doesn't seem to bother Sophia so he doesn't comment.

"Let's see what we can load up useful. I doubt she'd begrudge someone needing help." Most of these country farm ladies would all but give away the farm to help someone in need.

Sophia packs up the pantry, which is probably nowhere near as full as the lady normally kept it. Shane figures she probably lived off it until she died, without means to go to the store.

He appropriates the bathroom linens and a few quilts and sheets. They may not need the quilts in the August heat, but if they get wet or otherwise chilled, they'll appreciate having them. A thorough search of the two bedrooms turns up a quality leather belt and a pair of ladies leather work boots.

"Hey, Sophia! What size shoe you wear?" It's a long shot, maybe, because the woman's smaller than even half-grown Sophia.

"Seven."

Well, it seems they're in luck. He carries them into the kitchen and sits them on a chair. "Try those on."

He clears the bathroom next, taking toiletries and the gallon jug of bleach. That gets him a puzzled look from where Sophia is testing out her boots.

"Bleach can be used to sanitize drinking water when you can't boil it."

She absorbs the knowledge with a serious look before returning to her tasks. 

Mentioning water takes him back to the fridge. There are two large plastic juice bottles inside and while the juice is probably bad since they've been opened, they can be used for extra water. He sets water on to boil after pouring the juice out.

She's setting the last of her cloth grocery bags near the door when he checks the freezer.

"Well, hot damn. Tell me you like bacon." He pulls the frozen pack out and sees her grinning.

"It's frozen though?" She looks so hopeful.

"With my work schedule, one of the things I figured out was what really didn't need to be thawed out first." 

He rummages in the freezer and finds a bag of hashbrowns with peppers. This would be best with eggs, but he's not going to try to find where the hens are hiding eggs if they're free range.

It doesn't take long for him to get supper cooked, especially when he realizes there's unexpired and unopened cheese in the fridge. Sophia's wandered through, shooting him puzzled looks, but adding her own extras to the collection by the door.

"What's wrong?" he asks as he plates the food. There's more than they can eat, but he saw a small ice chest on the porch they can carry leftovers in. He slides drinks on the table.

"I didn't know you could cook." She takes a seat and tries a bite, smiling. "It's good."

Shane thinks back to the quarry and how none of the men cooked anything except for the Dixons at their own fire. "I know I didn't show it much before, but yeah, I learned how to cook from my Grandma Jean."

"I only know a little bit from my consumer science class."

"Your mama hasn't started teaching you?" By the time he was thirteen, he could cook enough meals to keep himself fed while his mama worked the evening shift. 

Carol just struck him as the type that would pass on her skills. She was certainly the primary reason they ate decent tasting food at the quarry.

"Beginners make mistakes."

It takes a minute to make the connection, which he kicks himself for. Ed Peletier and his never-ending list of damage he dealt out to the ladies he was supposed to protect.

"Can't promise much if we're on the road, but you can ask me about stuff that ain't defense."

She flashes him that trusting, happy smile before helping herself to a strip of the bacon he set as a side in addition to the bacon in the main dish.

"You gonna be okay sleeping in the car?"

"Yeah. At least I won't be alone."

"Gonna be a lot of just riding. Might check the bookshelves and see if anything is worth reading." He remembers seeing her read for pleasure, and while he can't see the elderly lady having similar reading preferences to a teenage girl, surprises happen.

She nods and they finish their meal in silence. He gets up to pack away the leftovers and fetch the ice chest. Like many homes with freezers, this one has several plastic bottles filled with water and frozen, which he layers on the bottom. He adds a package of frozen meat in case they do find a safe place to cook in the next two or three days.

But the rest of the space the leftovers don't need he fills with tubs marked as frozen fruit. They can eat as it thaws and not need to cook it.

When he returns to the house from the back porch, Sophia's already loading bags into the trunk. If she already estimated ten days on the hunting cabin food, this will stretch them out to a month, he thinks.

By five, they've packed everything they can pack and he's moved all the still viable frozen food out into the big freezer. Unplugging the fridge will reduce the pull on the propane, so if they or Rick's group happens back by, maybe they'll get some food oit of it.

"Gonna stop by the barn to see of the boat has any gas we can drain," he tells Sophia.

She nods, climbing into the passenger seat for the ride over. He pats the .22 in his pocket and reminds himself to test fire it before they leave. It doesn't take long to drain enough gas from the boat to top off the Bug's tank and fill two five-gallon gas cans. That's an extra tank of gas for the Bug.

Sophia joins him in the barn. He fires a couple of shots with the Walther to test it out, amd when it proves to be a decent little gun, he has her fire a few too. Glad to see she shows the experience she claims, he passes it off to her to thread the holster onto her belt where she already has her knife.

"Time to get on the road. I want to figure out where we are before dark."

As they leave the farm down a winding gravel driveway, he can't help but feel a sense of dread. He's banking so much on understanding Rick's way of thinking, but what if he's wrong?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hate to take them off their safe little farm...
> 
> But onward they go.
> 
> The VW Beetle is inspired by my love of the Harry Dresden series. Poor Shane doesn't get to start out with a blue car though...


	5. Confession

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sophia works up the courage to ask Shane how he got hurt.

**August 14, 2010**

When Shane reaches the highway, after more than a mile of long and winding driveway, he studies the road for a minute. North is the wrong direction for Ft. Benning, but it could be twenty miles in either direction before they find a town.

"North or south?"

Sophia looks both ways after looking at the map in her lap. "Might as well go the way we mean to go, right?"

"Yeah." He's familiar with the area around Senoia, to an extent, but they didn't search this far out. No one expected a girl to wander so far.

Like most of the highways away from the cities and towns, it's a deserted stretch of typically Georgian pavement. He takes a chance on speed to finish testing the Bug's mechanics, so they eat away the first five miles fast before he slows back down to a sedate forty-five.

With no towns in sight yet, the view is mostly isolated highway without any houses to break up the treelines. 

"First town we get to, we'll check for supplies. Most of these places have a Dollar General, at least, and we could always use more water."

"And clothes."

He starts to say they're okay there, but remembers while they both have changes of shirts and pants, neither of them have spare underwear and he doesn't have socks. Plus the more clothes they have, the less they need to clean just to change when needed.

The trees fade back from the road and now there's the occasion house surrounded by acreage. It's so similar to his home that he feels a jolt of homesickness.

"Town coming up," he says when he sees the speed reduction sign.

Sophia leans forward, although he downshifts and stops at the intersection. "Luthersville. We keep going straight."

"Alright." He puts the Bug back in gear, but keeps the speed low and stays alert. If Randall's confession at the very end is true, his group was north of Senoia. But they might not be the only predators out there.

It's a tiny town, probably too small for much they need. Sophia navigates him to the highway heading south of town. "It says Greenville on the pharmacy bottle."

He feels a surge of gratitude that the girl's prioritizing a pharmacy over the search. He knows there's one in Senoia, but that's firmly in the territory he's wary of with just him to protect Sophia. Plus he's not seeing a lot of walkers here, so he's hoping the people evacuated to Columbus.

"Lookie there, what did I tell you about these stores," he says. 

The parking lot of the Dollar General is completely empty, so he turns in. There's not really any place to hide or camouflage the Bug. He parks at the closed front doors.

"Stay put til I signal, okay?"

She nods, tucking away the map. He takes the keys, just in case they can enter the store, and goes to knock on the glass. After a minute, he repeats the process, before signalling Sophia.

Once she's behind him, he points out that the deadbolt isn't thrown. "We would need to break the glass then."

He pries the doors open just far enough with a piece of the display left outside to get the leverage to open them. "Stay close and watch my back, okay?"

She nods solemnly. The lucky part of these stores is that there's almost zero hiding places because they're so small. He clears it quickly, including the back and bathroom.

Once they're back in the aisles, he sighs. It's been picked over pretty well on the food and household supplies, but it's not empty.

"I saw laundry bags by the detergent," Sophia says. "What do we need most?"

Shane's glad he doesn't have to explain they're limited on space. "Clothing first, then meds, hygiene, and food."

It takes them about fifteen minutes to fill laundry bag each with socks, underclothes, and undershirts. Sophia's stuffed extras of the laundry bags in hers, even though they're carrying an empty bag each still. When he gives her a questioning look, she shrugs.

"For the actual laundry."

She's hesitating about something, staring down the personal hygiene aisle. He follows her line of sight and refrains from sighing. Would he prefer her not to need the damn things, sure. But this isn't about what he prefers.

"Sophia? Nothing to be embarrassed by. Get whatever you need."

She steps into the aisle, but seems either confused or overwhelmed, which is unusual for how she's been behaving.

"Sophia?"

"I don't need them, not really, but I don't want to not have them. And Mama never has any." She's blushing, and it clicks for him. He guesses she's still in that gray area about puberty.

"You ever see what your friends at school had?" Hell, he was a boy and got enough glimpses of boxes in lockers or items in purses to know kids see them around.

"Yeah, but the boxes are all kind of the same. I'm trying to remember health class, but that was just the basics."

Figuring there's got to be some sort of clue, he steps forward, vague memories of small spats between Lori and Rick for his partner buying the wrong product coming to mind. There's actually still a decent selection, which is a little sad with the gaps everywhere else.

"That one says teen."

"Yeah." She picks up the box and eyes it warily before dropping it in her bag. "Maybe I should take all of them?" 

Works for him, because he knows Glenn had the damndest time finding tampons and pads for the women in camp. "Sure. Look for any of the others, or pick some randomly?"

She shrugs, her embarrassment fading when he's reacted calmly. She goes through the boxes, selecting them by whatever method makes sense to her, and fills up about two-thirds of the bag.

He grabs the sole remaining box of toothpaste and after thinking on it a minute, tosses a couple handfuls of toothbrushes. The move down the aisle, gleaning useful items until the bags are full. After a trip to toss the bags in the car, he grabs a handful of the plastic bags at the register.

There's not much left in the medication aisle, but it's truly empty by the time they're done. 

Sophia eyes the decimated food aisles. "Well, at least the healthier stuff is what got left behind?" She drops a few random cans of fruit in a bag and tiptoes to grab a bottle of honey.

He hands her the two she can't reach. "Split the aisle like we did the clothes?"

"Sure." She moves efficiently behind him, as they both ignore what junk food remains or items they can't really use. They end up with three bags of food items.

A glance toward the doors tells him it's getting late. "Best get back to the car. It's getting dark and I don't wanna be in a town overnight."

"Can you take my bag?"

He accepts the bag, grinning as she dashes down an aisle and returns with three empty two-gallon gas cans. They get everything loaded and organized just a bit, when Sophia points to the stacks of charcoal outside the store.

"I think there was one of those little tabletop grills," Shane says. "Go get it and I'll load up the charcoal."

It's a tight fit in the trunk by the time she returns with a box carried in both arms and a bag. There's just enough room for the last of her loot. She pauses long enough to leave a note identical to the one in the farmhouse that changed their direction to south compared to the cabin one. The little bear smiles up from the empty box of Big Red gum.

"It's my favorite kind," she explains.

They're back on the road and there's still daylight. 

"If they headed south from the farm, they might even go through Greenville. But they might be ahead of us, since we were on foot so much of the day." He sighs. "Or they could stay in the area, looking for you, maybe from another farm."

Hershel and Maggie know the area and which neighbors might be a safe haven. Since none of them believed him on the level of danger a group like Randall's truly imposes, they might stay right in their radius.

"Well, if we can find out about the military base, then we have information to take back."

"That's time not directly looking for your mama."

"I know. But you said Daryl would take care of her. Finding a safe place is important too."

Shane has to marvel at the irony that a thirteen-year-old girl has a better grasp on priorities than the grown ass adults he left behind.

"Columbus it is. Without a caravan of people, we can probably make it there by tomorrow sometime, if the roads aren't blocked."

They've got enough gas to make it there and back, with what he siphoned from the boat. They can find more, and they don't need gallons upon gallons without the RV.

She pulls out a paperback and reads until they reach the outskirts of Greenville. There's not enough light to risk going into a town he's unfamiliar with.

He parks the Bug across from the end of the most likely route from Senoia, backing it far enough into an overgrowth of privet to keep even the luridly colored car hidden.

"Think you can sleep?" Shane can't imagine how restless her sleep must have been for the last two weeks, with no one to look out for her. 

She looks at the dimming light and nods. "We should eat first."

She reclines her seat enough to easily access the back seat. The ice chest is on the seat behind him, and she passes him one of the two Tupperware containers, a spoon, and a bottle of water. Collecting her own, she sits with her back against the passenger door and studies him as she eats.

"Do we need to check your bandage?"

Somehow, he doesn't think that's the question she intended to ask, but he answers anyway. "Probably. It's definitely not easing up on hurting like hell."

He fishes out the amoxicillin bottle, which also houses a handful of tylenol and ibuprofen for convenience. He takes the tylenol, waiting on the antibiotic until the full eight hours since his last dose.

He gets most of his food eaten before the real question surfaces.

"Mister Walsh? How did you get hurt?"

Well, fuck. He guesses he's lucky she was so grateful for a living human she knew that she didn't care at first. He takes a deep breath, feeling the pain arc through him as the reminder of what he's done.

"After Carl was shot, I made some really horrible choices. It led to someone having to stop me from making more."

"Mister Grimes?"

Shane nods. "He was right to do it."

"What did you do?"

The last thing he wants to do is terrify the girl that she's reliant on a killer, but lying to her feels worse. What if he does slip again? She needs to be forewarned.

"The man who accidentally shot Carl and I were sent to find medical supplies because he was an EMT. We got trapped and we couldn't both escape." He wants to look away from those intent blue eyes, but he can't. "I shot him so he would be a distraction."

"Did he die when you shot him?"

"No."

"He was eaten."

"Yes."

She looks down, studying her empty container, and sighs after a few minutes. Then those blue eyes are back on him and he's beginning to think his conscience will always be tied to pale eyes peering right into his soul.

"Would you do it again?"

"To save Carl? Yes." Overweight Otis might never have made it if Shane made the sacrifice instead, and without the supplies, Carl was going to die.

"To save yourself?"

"I don't know." It's the honest answer. Three months ago, he would have sworn he would never have killed an innocent man for any reason. Now? He doesn't trust himself.

"If it were me or you?"

He can translate that clearly. He killed an innocent to save Carl, but he's known Carl since before he was born. But she's a child herself, one dependent on him in a way Carl never has been.

"I would save you, just like I would Carl."

He means it, because layered on top of the suidicial mood he ran into the woods with is the memory of a little girl running into the night to save him.

She's still studying him and finally jerks her head in a stiff nod.

"Is that all?"

He shakes his head. "The man from the group that attacked ours. The group voted to kill him once, but Rick couldn't do it. We drove him away from the farm, but he knew the farmer's daughter. They were going to keep debating and probably set him free to eventually find his group."

"So you killed him."

"Yes. I took him into the woods and killed him. But I was really out of my mind that night, after. Getting rid of Randall was necessary, but after…" He can't bring himself to say it.

"You did something that made Mister Grimes hurt you."

"I did. I thought he was going to get everyone killed."

"Did you hurt him?"

"I couldn't, not when I was looking at him. I meant to. Planned to. But I didn't."

He still remembers the lowered guns. The hug and the feel of Rick's hand on the back of his neck: an anchor bringing him out of the abyss of pending insanity.

Then the sudden, sharp pain.

He wasn't the only one in the abyss last night.

Sophia's eyes flick to his chest, where the bandages distort his T-shirt.

"He left you too." Her voice cracks.

"It's not the same thing, sweetheart. He didn't mean to leave you, just lead the walkers away to find a weapon. Me? I deserved to be left. I did worse to Otis."

She's crying now. "He wouldn't have put Carl down and left him alone, would he?"

Shane's gut churns at the truth of that statement. Rick would never have left Carl alone with danger that close. In his darker moments, when he let the rage and fear really bleed over, he even considered that no one else running into the woods after Sophia would have left her.

Granted, the women or Dale would probably end up eaten themselves trying to defend her, but they would have died doing it.

He didn't lie to her about his own sins. He isn't going to try on Rick's either. But he can't say the words, so he shakes his head instead.

She's crying in earnest now, and he sets aside the food containers to lay a hand across her thin shoulder. He isn't sure she wants comfort from someone who just admitted what he did. She takes the touch as an invitation, curling into his shoulder and sobbing.

The moon rises as she falls asleep, using his shoulder as a pillow. He doesn't try to move her, but keeps watch on the empty highways in front of him until he can't stay awake either. He knows he should keep watch, but he doesn't want to ask her to watch him sleep.

She can't drive, so he has to sleep. He manages to take his antibiotic and dozes, trusting that they're hidden enough in the greenery that nothing will find them in the night.

They'll deal with what comes of his confession in the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The confession is inspired/directed by my 13 year old beta reader, who says if she had to chose between Rick or Shane as a protector at the end of season one, she's opting for the one willing to kill to keep her safe.
> 
> RBM is chugging along on the next chapter and the wedding reception may end up multiples, because a scene that was supposed to be small is nearly 2k... ;)
> 
> But the beta reader was begging a new chapter on this and she has the dangdest puppy eyes sometimes...


	6. Warzone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shane and Sophia scavenge along the way to Columbus.

** August 15, 2010 **

Shane wakes to light just starting to filter through the shrubbery. A glance at the dashboard clock shows it's not yet eight. Sophia is still curled against him as best she can be in the confines of the front seat.

He marvels at a world where he can confess to most of his sins and a kid still finds him as her safety net. 

"Hey, Sophia?"

She stirs, coming awake with that instant alertness that makes him want to beat Ed all over again. The sad part is that it will make her survival more likely because she's more aware of her surroundings than the average thirteen-year-old.

"What time is it?" she asks. There's no wariness in her expression, just the same calm confidence in him she's displayed so far.

"Nearly eight. Figure we need to stretch, take a bathroom break while we're still hidden, eat a little something."

As he stretches in his seat, the burn added to the pain worries him, so the first thing he does is take his meds. He eases the door open and edges around to Sophia's side of the car. Nothing seems amiss, so he opens the door.

She slips to the rear of the car to take care of her bladder, carrying the ziploc baggie with toilet paper. He does his best to keep an eye out while giving her privacy. Once she's back to the car and climbs inside, he follows suit.

He snags a couple of packages of wet wipes from the stash in the trunk, figuring they need them more in their day use bags to keep their hands clean. When he's back in the driver's seat, she's already got their first aid kit out, and he knows she saw his flinch earlier.

Shane eases his shirt over his head and releases the pressure bandage. There's no blood visible on the gauze, which is good. He peels away the bandaging and grimaces. The beginnings of inflammation he noticed yesterday are worse today.

"Should we clean it again? Maybe with antiseptic."

"Antiseptic can slow healing." He tries to remember his Red Cross course. It shouldn't be this hard, since he requalifies regularly, but it's mostly about initial treatment and not ongoing. "We'll just clean and rebandage for now."

She's gentle as she cleans away the discharge and applies more antibiotic cream. Once they get the bandages taped into place and he's got his shirt back on, she rolls down her window and tosses the old bandaging.

"Look at you, littering in front of a cop."

She giggles just a little. "Fruit or granola bars?"

They end up sharing one of the still half frozen freezer containers of strawberries. It's a cold treat, and probably not a thorough breakfast, but they're both anxious to get on their way. The worry he feels about his chest is reflected is the little furrow between her brows.

He doesn't think anyone passed them in the night, or he would have woken to the sound of engines in the quiet world they live in now. He starts the car and eases out of the privet, keeping an eye out. There's nothing moving anywhere in sight but them.

They get lucky on finding the pharmacy, because it's in a strip of ancient buildings that face the courthouse. The front door's been smashed and the security gates pried up. He just hopes there's something left behind.

"You willing to play lookout?" Being on the open street makes him nervous. She looks around and seems to understand and nods. "Just honk the horn if you see anything.and keep your gun handy."

"Be careful, Mister Walsh."

"Hey, Sophia?" She looks over, alert as always. "Why don't we stick to Shane? Someone who's covered my back ought to use my name."

It gets him a ghost of a smile and a nod. She tears a page off the notebook she brought from the lady's farm and passes it to him.

Shane unholsters his gun and eases inside the building, feeling the crunch of broken glass under his boots. Like most stores in these old buildings, it's set up long and narrow. The shelves have been ransacked, but not thoroughly. He reaches out to snag a couple of the floral reusable shopping bags near the register and circles the big counter to the restricted area.

It's as he expected. Whoever broke in was looking to get high, not to medicate. The narcotics cabinet is smashed to hell. He ignores it to scan for names he knows on the shelves.

The luck he's had since he stumbled upon Sophia's hiding place holds. He dumps two pharmacy-sized bottles of ciprofloxacin in a bag, followed by a bottle of cefalexin he remembers another deputy taking for pneumonia. He scans until he spots the Toradol, glad the painkiller isn't a narcotic and got missed.

It's an old fashioned pharmacy, because he glimpses the bulk of a hard copy PDR and slides it from under the counter after holstering the Glock. He's hoping they never need anything else, but the more access to information they have, the better. Even if they find Rick's group, Hershel is a vet and could use the resource.

He does pause at the narcotics cabinet long enough to pick up a missed bottle of hydrocodone, just in case. He knows from dental work that the shit makes him sleepy, so it's a last ditch resort.

On his way out, he stops to clear everything left in the first aid aisle and what's left of the snacks. Anything chocolate is a complete loss in Georgia's August heat, but he figures Sophia can use the other treats. He leaves the note the girl handed him in the now empty box of Big Red gum.

He pauses at a display of something he always thought frivolous, but now seems like a solution to a problem. Deciding he's left Sophia long enough, he selects what he needs and heads to the door cautiously.

Sophia spots him at the doorway, but she's relaxed. He brushes against a tipped over display with one foot and smiles, remembering the doll the girl carried and scoops up a beanie bear from the pile on the floor.

It earns him one hell of a smile when he passes the tie-dyed little peace bear to her. He sets the bags in the driver's seat. "Gonna go get some jugs of water I saw."

She nods and he makes it a quick trip to retrieve the gallon jugs of distilled water and a bottle of white shoe polish. He sticks the water in the backseat for now and gets himself settled back in the car.

"Hair dye and clippers?" Sophia asks, puzzled.

"If you're willing, it might be safer for you to seem to be a boy." The thought occurred to him, facing that display, that she's a blonde teenage girl and he's dealt with too many perverts over the years to not know that's distinctive.

She's already dressed like a boy, and the clothes either loose enough or her development slow enough that her hair is the main indicator of gender. Considering Carol's slender build, he thinks it might be easy to pass her daughter as a boy. Predators still target boys, but that's a smaller group.

He would rather she be shot as a potential threat as a male than suffer whatever fate a group like Randall's would inflict.

She thinks it over. "Do we have to cut my hair as short as yours?"

He barks out a laugh, running a hand over his prickly buzz cut. "Nah. Maybe like Carl's. There's different settings on those clippers."

"Next time we stop for the night," she agrees, and he breathes a sigh of relief. She tucks the items away in the bag she's still holding, before tapping him on the forearm. She opens her hand to show she's already got a dose of cipro.

He takes it and the bottle of water she offers, praying it helps more than the amoxicillin. He can't afford to get that kind of sick. "There's another bottle. Toradol. It's a pain med, kind of like ibuprofen but prescription. Snag me one of those."

She fishes the bottle out and hands him the tablet. Once he's done with that, she gets the map out. "There's a lot of ways to Columbus, but if we stay on Highway 27, it may be the shortest."

Shane thinks over his mental image of the map and nods. "We'll get there fast. Maybe come back another route."

He figures they're about fifty miles out of Columbus now. They'll probably hit traffic jams closer in, if Atlanta's anything to go by, but maybe they'll have answers by this afternoon.

Remembering why he grabbed the shoe polish, he hands her the bottle. "Think you can draw that bear in this?" They left a note on a car for her, back at the highway jam, so he hopes Rick or Daryl will look for similar signs.

"Yeah." She hops out, sketching in the bear quickly on the glass window with the white shoe polish. "Which way is Columbus?" she calls out.

He points and she adds an arrow with a cheeky grin over her shoulder at him.

Sophia settles back in the car with the PDR in her lap, expression intent as she reads. A glance shows him she's reading about the ciprofloxacin. Good. One of them needs to know more than just that it's an antibiotic he's taken before.

The little pastel bear peeks out of a pocket in the cargo pants she donned after her shower yesterday. It makes him smile as he turns his attention to pulling the car back onto the deserted streets.

"Gonna stop at that Napa we passed."

She looks up, curious, holding her place in her reading with one finger.

"Siphoning gas with a hose works, but it's dangerous if you accidentally ingest it. Parts store should have something with a pump."

Unlike most stores carrying food or other supplies, the Napa looks like it's ready for a normal work day. It's locked, though, so he risks breaking the glass. When nothing stirs inside or out, he heads inside, returning quickly with what he came for and another empty gas can.

Sophia opens her door. "We're gonna need to rearrange."

"Alright. You do that while I check out their truck."

He's in luck that they've never had reason to install a locking gas cap. He fills the five-gallon container easily and takes it to Sophia, who is moving some of the lighter items to the backseat. He takes the smaller gas cans and returns to the truck. 

By the time he has all three containers full and the Bug's tank topped off, Sophia's organized their supplies to her satisfaction. 

It's also when they see their first walker since the lady at the farm. It's dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, with no visible signs of injury, and since they can leave in a hurry, he decides to test her shooting skills on a moving target.

"Sophia. See if you can take that one down."

It gets him a nervous look, but she nods and steps to the back of the car with her little Walther drawn. He doesn't offer advice, just watches. She aims, gun held properly with both hands and her stance decent, and fires.

Her first shot hits the shoulder and she makes a frustrated sound. Before he can speak up, she adjusts her aim and fires again.

The second shot hits the walker right in its face, dropping it like a rock. When she turns to him with a look of triumph, he knows she's going to adjust to this just fine.

"Good job. You adapted to the difference in the target moving quickly and didn't waste ammo."

She's still smiling when they get back on the road.

The roads stay relatively clear most of the way in, but then the signs that Columbus repeated Atlanta's fate begin. Stranded cars, loose walkers, and miles of backed up vehicles, all headed out of the city.

They press on, because he needs to know. He pulls the car to a stop and they both just stare.

Compared to the damage they can see where Interstate 80 used to be, Atlanta's bombing was an amateur attempt at destroying a city. The wreckage of what was once Georgia's third largest city looks like images Shane's seen of warzones. 

Now he understands why there aren't herds of walkers around Columbus like Atlanta, because he can't imagine anything surviving this level of devastation. 

There's a bus on its side. He gets out and checks for any walkers before motioning for Sophia to join him. She's solemn, staring at the wreckage beyond this final strip of intact highway. 

"Draw your bear," he says hoarsely. 

She pulls the shoe polish out of a cargo pocket and graffitis the comical animal on the rear windows of the bus. "What note?"

"Going to KC."

She adds the message, along with a stick figure in a hat that is unmistakably Rick in his sheriff's department hat for anyone who knows their group.

At his quirked eyebrow, she shrugs. "So they don't think we crossed the river."

Kansas City. He laughs and pats her shoulder. 

She studies the glass for a minute. "Think they would look for a note if I taped it? In case the rain messes up the message?"

"Yeah, they should."

It takes her less than five minutes to get a note written and stuck to the window. The folded paper is protected under a strip of duct tape. He doesn't know if it'll be found, but they've tried.

Once he's got the Bug turned around and they're driving in the wrong lane to go back the way they came, he broaches the problem.

"Searching the area they're in could be real dangerous if the bandit group is still around." He doesn't want to disappoint her, but he doesn't want to endanger her, either.

She bites at her bottom lip and nods, finally turning to look at him. "You sure Mister Grimes would go home eventually?"

"One hundred percent, no. But he's the type that likes being somewhere familiar. Hated being away even for college." Unlike Shane, who delighted in escaping the narrow confines and low expectations of his future that King County held.

"Okay. It'll be safer there, since you know it too, right?"

That's what he hopes. He knows King County and the neighboring areas like the back of his hand. "I hope so."

She pulls out her map. "Show me where we're going."

He takes his eyes off the road to point it out on the map. Letting her work out a route to keep her involved, he starts to think over where to go that he can fortify until his partner wanders home.

He doesn't know what he'll do if Rick doesn't follow expectations, not in the long run. Right now, he's just going to keep setting the goal of keeping Sophia safe, no matter what it takes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As much as I would love to have them searching for the group, it would be a needle in a haystack issue. So our dynamic duo will head for home ground and hope Rick's bright enough to find their clues or just go home.
> 
> There's a Daryl&Sophia story that has them road tripping and leaving spray painted messages. I'll try to find it for due credit since it inspired the shoe polish notes. Edit: The story is called Divergence, by Aurilia, on FFnet. Quite a good read for the Sophia survives niche.


	7. Amateur Barber

** August 15, 2010 **

Shane slows down and stops outside Thomaston, eying the sign on a driveway that indicates a chicken farm of some sort. It could either be a real haven for the night or a nightmare. All depends on what happened to the chickens.

"Getting close enough to dark we should find a place for the night," he says.

Sophia eyes the sign before asking, "Why a chicken farm?"

"Lot of these places, even if they brought in county or rural water for the house, they have well water." He turns down the winding drive, staying alert. The owners could still be alive and well, and he figures on fewer Hershels in this world and more wary folks like him.

Worse, it could be a home base to a bandit group, but he doubts it. With so much real estate to choose from, no one's going to voluntarily shack up on a chicken farm.

He explains that theory to Sophia, who laughs. "They do smell something awful."

"Just be glad you never lived near a hayfield crop dusted with chicken shit fertilizer." There's a childhood memory he could do without.

She wrinkles her nose, leaning forward to study the property that emerges from the trees. When he stops the car, he doesn't have to ask her to assess.

"House, no garage, pole barn and two chicken houses. Might be like the last because there's no vehicles visible, but people like to park at the back door that we can't see. Probably no chickens in the barns because there's no walkers in sight.

He compliments the observations and pulls the car forward to the back porch. It'll keep them mostly out of sight and check that one last blind spot at the same time. There's no other vehicle here except for theirs and the tractor in one slot of the pole barn.

Pocketing the car keys, he tells Sophia to follow, glad that she draws her knife without being told. The door is actually locked, but he checks the usual hiding places, finding the hidden key in the base of a ceramic turtle in the flower bed.

They're lucky this time. Whatever happened to the family that lived here, it wasn't inside the home. With each room cleared, he's still uneasy until their trip out to the two chicken houses shows nothing but empty, smelly open space.

"They must have been between flocks," he says. The alternative, hundreds of chickens starved and roasted in the big buildings, is one he's glad they're missing out on.

"At least they got their garden done before, right?"

The garden gone wild is surrounded by a neat row of T-posts and field wire. Shane can see tomatoes, field peas, and okra, just from here. He redirects their path and Sophia grins as she eases the gate open.

The residents must have made impulsive trips to the garden too, because Sophia locates a half bushel basket and tucks it on her hip.

As overgrown as the garden is, he calls out a caution. "Watch where you step or put your hands, kiddo. It's a nice place for snakes to find shade and something to eat."

He regrets it a little when she turns apprehensive. 

"Most snakes, you'll never know they're there. Hear you coming and leave. But if you get too close, it's like that scene in Jurassic Park where the T-Rex is trying to eat people. It doesn't know you won't eat it."

"So it thinks I'm a T-Rex?" The momentary fear is gone, chased away by amusement.

"Yep. Don't get me wrong. Snake's tasty cooked up right, but we don't want to scare one into biting us."

She's picked several tomatoes, avoiding the ones which have become food for birds or bugs. "You've eaten snake?"

"A time or two for a wild game fundraiser."

He's walking the rows, using a hoe to nudge the overgrown zucchini. Nothing stirs other than spiders, so he selects two and unearths a couple of onions before rejoining her where she's eyeing the okra.

"Gotta cut it." He pulls out his pocket knife to demonstrate. "If the knife won't go through the stem easy, it's probably too old to eat. Find the ones about two, three inches that are still a pretty green and not faded."

He lets her keep the knife, reminding himself she needs one of her own. The hunting knife is for walkers, not food. He passes on that caution, too.

Sophia makes a face as she shuffles through the plants harvesting pods. "Oh, God. No mixing up the knives, got it."

"Let's skip the peas for now. Pick some and take them with us, maybe."

"What are they?"

He picks a pod and breaks it open, since he's not entirely sure. But the row of field peas inside is unmistakable. "Black eyes."

"Oh, I like those." She offers the basket. "This enough for supper?"

"Yeah. We got those steaks that should be thawing good to go with the veggies."

She follows him out of the garden, and they latch the gate. He spots the well house and stops by to see if there's a generator. There isn't, so he sends Sophia ahead while he goes to retrieve one of the ugly monsters from the chicken house. It's got enough diesel for their purposes, although he hates the idea of the noise.

Once he has it up and running and the well pump plugged in, he returns to the house.

"Why do we need the generator?" Sophia asks. She's in the pantry already, stacking the non-perishables onto the kitchen counter.

"Most wells have a storage tank above ground, but it's usually not huge. Maybe forty, fifty gallons. Once it's drained, the pump needs electricity to draw up more."

He's guessing with access to the generators used for their poultry, the owners here didn't see the need for a permanent system like the peanut farm.

"And we don't know how much is still in the tank, right?"

"Yeah. Figure we get showers, refill water jugs and bottles and get a good supper in. Stove's propane, so I'm betting the hot water heater is too."

Sophia turns the handle at the kitchen sink, letting the water run to find out. She's used to being efficient though, because she starts washing the vegetables and placing them on a dish towel.

"Yep. Hot. Ouch."

He chuckles, earning himself a little glare before she adjusts the water. It just makes him grin that she's getting confident enough that she's safe with him to have such a typical teenage reaction.

"Alright. I'll get the ice chest. You think we need anything else out of the car other than empties?"

She glances at the food she's already moved out of the pantry and shakes her head. By the time he returns with everything, she's finished washing the vegetables and moved on to boiling water.

He knows the well water is probably fine without the boiling, but without knowing the last time the well was tested, better safe than sorry. Not like they've got an emergency room to go to now.

The house is hot, not as well insulated as the little stone one was. He decides to risk the windows being open to get a cross breeze going. The house has double hung windows, so he drops the top sash down. Walkers can't reach the opening and they can get some of the breeze from outside.

"I miss air conditioning," Sophia mumbles.

"You and me both, kiddo." Even the Bug isn't a break there, because it's air cooled without an air conditioner. He's mostly used to it, driving a Jeep like he did, but he even misses the cranky A/C of the patrol car.

He unwraps the package of meat simply marked 'steak' and grins at the cube steaks. "You like chicken fried steak?'

"Yeah."

"Bet your mama makes a good one." Carol made squirrels tasty, so he figures a full kitchen would have her working wonders.

"She does. You know how?"

"Can't make everything under the sun, but living by myself, eating restaurant food gets real old. Not too healthy either." While he learned to cook as a kid just to have hot meals in general at home, as an adult, he learned to keep up with his fitness regimen. "We don't have eggs to make it really good, but this'll work."

Shane passes her a can of evaporated milk. He doesn't make most of the food though, just chopping the vegetables. He walks her through the steps like he promised for the steak and for the vegetable ratatouille. She's attentive and absorbs information on the first round. He spares a moment to think his grandmother would have found her a joy to teach.

Only the gravy intimidates her, but he figures she can try it another day. She still watches attentively.

"Pour off all the oil you cooked the meat in except about four or five tablespoons. Add in the flour and brown it." He works as he talks. It's hot over the stove, but it'll be worth it.

"And the bits left from the meat stay behind?"

"That's part of what makes it tasty. See how the flour's turning brown?" She nods. "Want ro pour in the rest of that can of milk?"

She pours it in slowly as he stirs watching the gravy thicken. "That's all?"

"Yeah. Most gravy is just oil, flour, and either water or milk. Salt and pepper to taste especially if you aren't using oil that meat cooked in."

She plates up the steak and ratatouille so he can pour gravy over the steaks. 

"Now this ain't a healthy meal on the meat and gravy side of things, but I figure we've earned the treat," he tells her. It goes without saying that beef steak of any type, even cheap cube steak, is something they won't really see again.

He takes care to compliment the food, watching as she smiles in response with less of the blush he's seen before in praising her. It is really good, and he realizes how much he's missed fresh vegetables.

"Do you have a garden back home?' Sophia asks.

He shakes his head. "Work schedule is usually a little too crazy. Lady down the road does a farmers market booth, so I just bought from her."

It's a bittersweet memory. Gloria was one of the first fatalities in King County from the flu. At sixty-nine, her body didn't stand a chance with the virus. He wonders if her big garden's gone wild like this one.

"So you didn't live in town like Carl did?"

"Nah. Not enough privacy in town. Bought me a place out by the river instead."

"Do you have a boat?"

"Little jon boat, yeah. Enough to get by in the oxbow and the river too. Used to take it over to the lake sometimes." He never could understand paying more for a bass boat than he spent on his Jeep.

"Are we going to stay out there?"

Shane thinks it over. His place is remote, barely even in King County, miles out of the county seat Rick lives in. But that may make it safer, and they could fish the river and hunt in the woods behind his neighbor's place.

"Probably best. We can leave messages in town and check in periodically."

"I don't know how to fish. Dad said I talked too much."

Hell, half the fun of taking Carl fishing was shooting the breeze with the kid. "You have met me, right? Don't think you can outtalk me."

She giggles.

"You should pick it up real easy. Nothing to it compares to taking down walkers."

After supper, she's exploring the house and he's washing the dishes, he wishes it wasn't selfish to hope it takes a little while for Rick to wander home. He's looking forward to teaching her more.

"Going out to get our bags," she says, just as he sets the last pan in the drain rack.

She brings them in, along with the bag from the pharmacy.

"You still game for a haircut then?"

She shrugs. "It'll be cooler and out of my way, right?"

"Yeah. Best to do it before your shower."

She grabs a chair from the table and tugs it out to the back porch. He cracks open the packaging on the clippers and installs the batteries. When he really takes a look at the clipper guards, he realizes he may have misled her on how short her hair will be. The kit only goes up to a number four guard.

"We should dye it first, right? My friend dyed his hair and turned his scalp kind of blue."

"I'll take your word for it on that." He's never messed with hair dye before, other than temporary Halloween spray. Being single keeps him from the intricacies as well.

He follows her to the bathroom and they work their way through the instructions on the color she selected. It doesn't take long to have her formerly blonde hair all uniformly mahogany brown. Or at least that's the color the box describes.

She peers in the mirror. "It's kinda weird."

"Probably going to get weirder with the cut." He explains the clipper guard issue.

"Could you cut it too? One of the boys has a ponytail with the sides shaved. I always thought it looked kind of cool."

"I can try." He rummages in the medicine cabinet and along the counter, finding what he's looking for: a small pair of hair trimming scissors, a comb, and a couple of hair ties. "Alright, out to the porch."

He figures, worst case scenario, she ends up with a half-inch buzz cut, which is longer than his and her mother's.

"Could just stick a bowl on your head and shave around it," he teases.

"No way. Then I would end up looking like Moe from The Three Stooges."

"I'm surprised you know who that is," he remarks, parting her hair to twist the top into a top knot. He's got a good idea of the style she's suggesting, since he had a teammate with something like that back at college.

"It waa one of my dad's favorites, but kinda funny. I liked Abbott and Costello better."

"Oh, really?" Shane grins as she starts into one of the routines just as he begins the shave of the lower two-thirds of her hair.

The once blonde locks fall around her, swirling in the breeze and strands drifting out into the yard. He lets her happy chatter wash over him, pushing away the nausea that the buzzing sound unexpectedly rouses in him. He moves quickly to get to the point he can put the clippers down.

Drawing on the memory of Lori cutting Carl's hair in the quarry, he releases the top knot and sets to work with the scissors. By the time he's got the top about two inches long, he thinks it doesn't look too terrible.

The final verdict is Sophia's happy exclamation from the bathroom. "I look like Pink, with brown hair."

Once she's mentioned the singer, Shane can't help but agree. She doesn't exactly look like a boy, not really, but it's at least ambiguous now.

"Well, since I seem to have found a new calling as a barber, why don't you get showered?"

She hums happily and goes to fetch her pack. He goes on a search and explore expedition himself while she's busy, noting the boy in the house seems the right size for Sophia. He tosses several pairs of pants and T-shirts on the bed for Sophia to go through.

In the desk drawer, he finds several pocket knives of different sizes and adds those to the pile on the bed. The kid had a gym bag, luckily emptied of clothes, which will serve her a little better than the smaller one she has now.

He ignores the teenage girl's room for now, because she's probably college age based on the textbooks. In the master, he checks the sizes on the jeans, but the men's jeans are two inches too short and at least a size too big in the waist. Since he took a minimal amount of clothing with him, he will make do with what he has for now.

Sophia emerges, playing with her hair absently. He knows the feeling. He's gotten used to feeling the air on his scalp, but it's not been this short since college.

"Still good?" he asks, passing her in the hallway to go get his own bag.

"I like it." 

"Go see if any of the boy's stuff will fit you."

She disappears down the hall while he shuts himself in the bathroom to check out what he's been ignoring. 

Once the bandaging is all peeled away, he can see the infection setting in. He sighs and cleans the wound again. All he can do is pray. 

At least they'll be home by tomorrow.


	8. Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shane's condition worsens, but they make it back to King County.

**August 16, 2010**

Shane wakes in the morning feeling overheated despite the cooler temps nightfall brought with the still open windows. His body aches all over, and he realizes that the infection he’s been dreading is taking hold on a larger scale than just the stab wound itself. He manages to sit up from where he slept on the living room sectional. Sophia’s still asleep, curled up nearly in a fetal position on the smaller side of the big couch.

While they’ve got thermometers in their supplies now, thanks to his raid of the pharmacy, he heads for the bathroom instead. Avoiding the answer for a minute, he takes a leak and washes his hands from the gallon-sized pitcher they filled up last night before he turned off the generator to spare diesel and noise.

He bites the bullet and sticks the damn digital thermometer in his mouth. While he waits on the beep, he touches the bandaging gently. Even that light touch hurts almost more than the night he received the wound.

The beep of the thermometer is too damn cheery for the news it brings.

101.4.

Not crazy high yet, but not where he wants it to be when he’s still in strange territory with a half-trained girl.

Back in the living room, he finds the pharmacy bag and takes the cipro and the ketorolac. He remembers Sophia’s caution that the PDR says it’s a short-term painkiller and hopes this infection doesn’t outlast the safe period to take it.

Sophia’s awake now, blinking at him sleepily and that tugs at his emotions further. Yesterday, she woke so quickly he hated the reminder of her fearful past. Today, she’s slower to wake, because she’s decided he isn’t a threat to her, he thinks. 

He can’t help laughing at the bird’s nest that the new haircut descended into while she was sleeping. “Go take a look in the mirror, kiddo.”

She stumbles by, and he laughs again when he hears, “Oh my God, I look like I was electrocuted.” 

He hears a splash of water before she returns, her hair firmly wet down. “It’s going to be like this every morning, isn’t it?” she asks.

“Probably. Shorter hair gets a bit wilder when you sleep than long hair.”

“How are you feeling?” she asks, looking at his chest. He didn’t have her help the night before with changing the bandage, not wanting her to see where he had to clean off the discharge that is developing now.

“Like crap on a cracker.” No sense in outright lying to her.

Sophia sighs and hands him a bottle of Gatorade she pilfered from the pantry. “Do you think the antibiotic is helping?”

“Probably. I don’t think I would be upright if it wasn’t.”

“Alright.” She leaves the room, going down the hall to the bedrooms they avoided to get better airflow in the living room. He hears her banging around a bit before she returns down the hall with a stack of textbooks.

He has to give her points for being more nosy or more observant than he is, because her haul is a stack of nursing textbooks, from what he can tell.

“I think the girl was going to nursing school,” Sophia says. “She’s got a handbook on the desk for the community college in town.”

Nursing textbooks are bound to be better detailed than his Red Cross training, so he takes one book while Sophia tackles another after retrieving a bottle of Gatorade for herself. The urgency he feels to get back home is outweighed by the potential for knowledge right here in front of them.

“Here.” Sophia slaps the book she has down on top of his, pointing. “What color is it?”

He skims the text and grimaces. “Red and yellow both, last night. I cleaned off the discharge before I rebandaged.”

She surprises him by reaching for the bandage, but something in how her movements are jerky makes him allow it. She puts the pressure bandage on the table, eyeing the medical tape before taking a deep breath and peeling it away.

The mess he saw last night hasn’t improved. The edges of the wound are inflamed and red, with a thick discharge making for a truly distasteful sight. She flinches, but turns back to the book.

“We need to irrigate it again, it says.”

It’s going to hurt like utter hell, even with the ketorolac setting in, but he nods. She grabs the supplies, including some of her bottles of boiled water, and he stretches out on a towel on the living room rug. 

It feels precisely like he expects to have water poured into the wound. He’s shaking and feeling the need to vomit by the time she stops with the water. But it’s not over yet, because now she’s cleaning the edges, wiping away what clung to the edges of the wound even with the irrigation.

Sophia looks distinctly weepy by the time he can really focus on her, but she’s soldiering through, patting the area around the wound dry. She tears open one of the boxes from the pharmacy with an abrupt motion, fishing out one of the individual packages.

“The book says…” Her voice cracks and she has to try again. “The book says an alginate dressing might help.”

He finds his voice. “You’re doing good, Sophia.”

She nods, biting her lip, and gently places the dressing on his chest. She covers it with a different type of gauze pad, before taping everything down. It takes him a minute to sit back up, because the current sensation feels like she poured boiling water over his chest and followed it up with hot coals.

“I’m gonna go…” 

He makes it to the bathroom before he vomits, thankful all he’s had today is the Gatorade so far. He isn’t sure how much of the medication he’s processed.

“Shane?”

He raises his head up to peer at her and she’s holding one of the medication bottles and a water bottle. “Maybe you should take the other antibiotic? The PDR says it treats skin infections too.”

At this point, he’s willing to try it, so he rinses his mouth with the bottle she offers and takes the pill. He maneuvers to his feet and flushes the toilet. “I really want to get on the road, kiddo.”

If he’s going to be sick - or worse - he wants to be in his home, where he knows where everything is, and he’s reasonably certain Sophia will be safe.

~*~*~*~*~*~

It takes them over three hours to reach the King County border, since they leave a few more messages along the way. He’s still running a fever, but he takes the highway into the county seat. When he pulls up outside Rick’s old house, he feels a tug of nostalgia for how many times he pulled up here in his Jeep.

“I doubt they’re back here, but in hopes they will come by, let’s leave a message.”

Sophia nods. Her face shows the worry that’s been growing all day, little side looks toward the distortion of his T-shirt from the bandaging beneath. He squeezes her hand.

“C’mon, kiddo. Just this one stop and then we’ll go somewhere I’m not driving anymore.” Constantly irritating the wound is likely part of the infection, he thinks.

Weapons in hand, they advance up the concrete steps, but there’s nothing in the end. Just an unlocked door and an empty house. It looks much like it did the day Shane scrambled to get Lori and Carl into his Jeep and away, to the promised safety of Atlanta.

The wave of grief that hits him nearly puts him on his knees, until a small hand curls into his. Anchored back to today and dragged out of the memory, he takes a deep breath.

“Thank you.” He barely recognizes his voice as his own.

Sophia nods and doesn’t let go, even as he takes a seat at the kitchen table and tries to reorient himself. She lays her gun on the table, since he has hold of her right hand, and fiddles with the damn weird salt and pepper shakers still sitting on the table like the Grimes family will come home any minute now.

“It’s a pretty house,” she says finally.

Shane coughs in an attempt to laugh. “Yeah, it is.”

They were happy enough here, he thinks, even when Rick and Lori were at odds with each other more often than not the past couple of years. Sitting here he can see the sink Rick broke and he fixed, which is one of thousands of memories of time spent here. He takes a deep breath.

“Guess we should leave a note. Maybe more than one, in case they don’t check all the rooms.”

She nods and finally lets his hand go, going to take a magnetic notepad off the fridge. She pulls a pen from her pocket. “What should it say?”

It’s a good question, since so many of their messages were about direction and getting to King County itself. “How about we say, ‘Christmas comes every Sunday in King County’.”

“Will he understand what that means? Because I don’t.”

“Hopefully. There’s a Christmas tree farm on the way to my place. First time we ever took Carl out there to cut a tree after they bought this house, he said he wanted Christmas to come every Sunday.” Five years ago, that was. Seems like a lifetime ago.

She writes out the message several times, including one final time that she leaves on the pad and sticks it back to the fridge. “Where should I leave these?”

Shane gets to his feet and leads her around the house, tucking the notes in places Rick might look, if he ever comes home again. When they leave, he leaves the door unlocked after he shuts it, because it would suck for them to come home and have to break the glass. He doubts anyone held onto house keys this long.

Back in the Bug, Shane tries to remember what house Rick said the man who saved him was squatting in, but he can’t recall the neighbor’s name. He circles a couple of the blocks near Rick’s house, but nothing stands out.

“Don’t think we’re going to find him based on a conversation I barely remember,” he tells Sophia.

“And he might think we’re not friendly and hide, if he has a kid with him, right?”

She has a very good point there. He certainly would avoid strangers, even if they were driving a Pepto-pink VW. He gives up on the search and heads out of town, dodging occasional abandoned cars and trying damned hard not to think about the people who lived here.

The walker population is fairly small, none aggressive enough to follow the Bug, and he wonders if Rick’s friend is responsible. It’s something he’ll worry about later. They have enough supplies in the car, plus what is likely still at his house, to make it at least a month.

Jesus Christ, he needs some rest and to kick this fever.

While Highway 36 is an almost direct route, he detours just to show Sophia the Christmas tree farm. She watches the trees go by with a sigh. “I’ve never had a real Christmas tree before.”

“Well, maybe this year will be a little different.” 

It’s another thing to file away that this girl hasn’t experienced. His own mama, poor as she was, still managed a real tree every few years. Sometimes money was too tight, and they fell back on the aging, dinky artificial tree she kept stored in a closet the rest of the year, but not always.

It earns him another of those assessing looks, but she seems satisfied with whatever she sees, because she returns to looking out the window. They reconnect to the highway and dodge around a wreck. He willfully does not concentrate on the fact that he recognizes one of the damaged vehicles.

“How much further?”

“About five miles.”

She’s quiet when he takes the first turn off the highway, but he gets the idea she’s memorizing the route. That’s good, because she needs to know where town is, if she needs to ever go without him, worst case scenario.

At the next turn, he knows he’s right, because her eyes go to the street sign. It’s a longer stretch of road this time, but when he slows to turn, he speaks. “This is my road. Goes a bit like a fishhook, out toward the river then back to the end.”

“You live at the end?”

Shane nods. That was the lure of the place, and why he spent more than it was really worth to buy the place when it hit foreclosure after the prior tenant died and his kids didn’t take up the bank note.

“Lots of woods.”

“It’s real private, compared to town. Everybody’s got at least a few acres between them. A lot of the ones on the right side of the road have dock access to the oxbow lake or the creek that connects the lake down to the river.”

He makes the big turn, the road nearly looping back on itself in the fishhook he described. There’s only one more house on the right before his, and he stops in his driveway to punch in the code to the gate. He’s lucky that the damn solar panel for the gate’s mechanism is still working, because the gate opens slowly and he edges inside waiting to make sure it closes behind them.

The other deputies made fun of him for fencing in the little property, wondering who would travel so far out and be stupid enough to rob a county deputy at that. He didn’t bother to tell them he just liked the idea that folks couldn’t just drive up anytime without him knowing they were coming.

“We’ll need to reinforce the fence some,” he tells Sophia. “It’s tall enough, but I put it in with t-posts, like the garden back at the last place. They can be pushed over, with enough force.”

Only the corners and certain spots along the fence line are the big wooden posts that would stand up to a smaller herd. But for now, it should keep them safe, until he’s in the shape that’s needed to redo the weaker points.

“Okay. And walkers can’t swim, right?” 

She’s not looking at the house as he pulls into one of the two parking spots underneath it. The house is raised above the potential flood level, a combination of concrete and wooden pilings that aren’t the prettiest things he’s ever seen, but they do their job. He’s never had the water reach the house itself even if he did have to evacuate the Jeep one year when it flooded heavily.

But the fact that the house is literally above them is why Sophia’s attention is on the water. Three hundred or so feet from the last of the pilings under the house is the oxbow lake that’s the entire reason he bought the place.

“No, sweetheart, they cannot swim.” Thank God for small favors in this fucked up world.

She opens her door and ventures out, glancing up curiously at last but looking between him and the dock. He knows there’s no way there’s anything between the house and the dock, so he motions her onward.

Sophia jogs down the incline, booted feet quick on the path he installed to the water. She reaches the dock and leans over one of the rails to peer down at the water for a minute, before looking around.

He wonders what she thinks of what she’s seeing as she slowly turns, looking back up the hill to the house perched above her. He replaced all the timeworn old Masonite siding with wooden shake siding, staining it a color the can called smoke blue which makes it blend into the trees even in winter. The deck goes all the way around, where he ripped off the rotted original and expanded it. 

Today is probably the first time he really thinks about how much the house actually fits the world they’re living in. They won’t have to close themselves in, between the raised house and the fence.

She’s looked her fill, apparently, because she comes running back up the path. “We’re going to be carrying a lot of things up, aren’t we?”

“Yeah, just a little.”

And the worry is back right away. “I can do that, you know. I’m strong enough.”

He wants to argue the point, but he also knows doing any more damage to his chest is a stupid use of pride. “Alright. I’ll go unlock the place.”

Snagging the hidden key buried in the soil around a potted tree on the upper deck, he leans on the door for a minute, trying to catch his breath. When he hears her boots on the stairs, he straightens and unlocks the door.

They’re home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like I should post a medical disclaimer... while I do a lot of research, there's a large part of Shane's ongoing and upcoming condition that is largely guesswork. Obviously, in a situation like this, go to the hospital, right? (I also may or may not have given in and purchased a 600-page used nursing textbook because I keep writing medical stuff... it arrives sometime next week, so I'm just kind of flying by the seat of my pants with Google on some of this.)
> 
> Things are about to get *really* rough for our duo.


	9. Not Gonna Be a Crybaby

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sophia explores Shane's house while trying not to think about what him getting sick really means.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sophia is driving the POV bus today. o.O

** August 16, 2010 **

Sophia checks over the car one last time for anything she’s left behind. It feels like she’s made a million trips up the stairs to the raised house, but she knows realistically, it’s more like a dozen. There’s nothing left in the car, so she locks it and pockets the keys. 

Back upstairs, she surveys the bags upon bags of supplies on the deck and takes a deep breath. She told him she was strong enough to do this, and she will. He trusts her and believes her, and no matter how much he’s hiding it, he’s sick in a way that terrifies her to think about it. Working means she doesn’t think as much, so she picks up several bags and moves inside.

“There’s power?” she says, blinking a little when she sees the light in the fridge where he’s looking inside and checking a few items. After the generators at the two farms, she shouldn’t be surprised, but she is.

“Yeah. Got solar put in after a big ice storm a few years back knocked power out for a week. Still paying that damn installation off, actually.”

She puts her first load of bags down near the fridge. “Guess that’s a bill you won’t miss, huh?”

It makes him laugh, so she smiles, even if he doesn’t see it because he’s moved down the hallway to check on the rest of the house. He scared her sometimes, just a little, at the quarry, because he was big and loud, like her daddy. But the longer she watched him with Carl, the more she realized that was about all the similarities between the two men.

At the time, him wailing on Ed like he did scared her until later, once her mama wasn’t crying so much anymore. It’s the first time she ever believed anyone could put a stop to her daddy’s temper.

Opening the fridge herself, she looks to see what’s already in there. There’s actually a bottle of orange juice, still sealed, in a half-full fridge. She’s guessing when he left here, he probably wasn’t expecting to be gone a long time or need refrigerated food.

She opens the juice after checking the date on the bottle and pours them both glasses. It’s been long enough since his last dose of both meds to take some more, so she sets all the prescription bottles and a thermometer on the table next to his glass. Taking a big drink of hers, glad it’s cold after drinking warm bottles of water for weeks, she goes back outside to keep moving their bags inside.

Shane’s back in the kitchen now, although it’s really one big room. The door from the side deck where the stairs are comes in at the living room. There’s a dining area on the right, on the side of the house toward the road, and the kitchen’s on that side too. She can see the hallway by the kitchen, leading to whatever bedrooms the house has. 

Due to the light at the far end of the hallway, she can see a big circular fan sitting and running near the other door to the outside with a box fan behind it. It looks like they’re facing out the screen door though.

The part that’s really worrying her is that Shane is actually sitting down at the table. He’s never been a still person in her experience, always moving. Now he’s just sitting there, drinking the orange juice methodically. His fingers on his free hand are still, not tapping or moving, and worst of all, he’s _quiet_. 

Sophia doesn’t comment on it, because talking about it makes it more real, and she’s just not ready for that reality check yet. 

Once everything’s inside except the bags of charcoal and the grill, she leaves the door open and raises the glass in the screen door. She remembers some science class about air flow, so if the fans are blowing out, they’ll need air coming in, right?

“Should I open windows?” she asks.

It startles him out of whatever funk he’s fallen into, and he jumps a little and gives her a tired smile. “Yeah. A/C won’t run with just the solar power. You can turn on the fans in rooms we’ll use. First bedroom on the left for you.”

He seems fairly listless, so she goes around opening the windows. Just getting the lake side ones in the living room changes the entire feel of the room. As hot as the August day is, she can feel the cooler air from the lake she noticed earlier at the dock. She finishes opening all the windows in the living room and dining area, before moving down the hallway. 

The bedroom he assigned to her has windows facing the lake too. It’s got a black metal-framed bunk bed with a full-size futon on the bottom. From a couple of comics and old toys scattered about, she bets this was probably where Carl slept if he stayed over at Shane’s house. She raises both windows and turns on the round fan. It’s pointed at the wall, which is a little weird, but as the air bounces back at her, she understands.

Across from the bedroom is a set of double folding doors she figures hide a washer and dryer, so she skips that. The next door on the left is a tiny, tiny bathroom with just enough room for a tub and shower combo, a toilet, and sink. It’s breathtakingly hot, so she turns on the exhaust fan and leaves the door open.

The next room she thinks is probably Shane’s, if nothing else because it has its own bathroom, and she would want one that looked on the lake if she owned a house like this. She turns on the bathroom’s exhaust fan and opens both of the lakeside windows before looking around while she enjoys the feel of the breeze coming inside.

There’s a queen-sized bed with an emerald green quilt under the windows on the side wall. Opening that pair of windows means having to climb onto the bed because she isn’t tall enough to reach otherwise. It gives her a good view of a gun safe mounted to the side of the nightstand closest to the lake side windows.

She files that little bit of information away and turns on the fan like the other bedroom has. The fan half blocks the folding closet door closest to the outer wall, so she has to close the doors. She guesses he left them ajar when he packed to leave. There’s not a lot of clothes out of the closet, and she can see several uniforms hanging in the plastic from the dry cleaners.

Out of habit, she picks up the discarded uniform in the floor and drapes it on the side of the hamper. The heavier police utility belt she dumps on the top of the dresser. Last thing they need is him tripping over it. When she first saw him on that highway before the quarry, he wasn’t wearing a uniform. He must have changed when he stopped by to pack necessities and hurried, because several of the dresser drawers are not shut all the way.

Across the hall, the corner room is set up as a home gym. She ignores the equipment to open the four windows. He said to only turn on fans in the rooms they’ll be using, so she leaves this one alone and pushes the door open in the last room, the one between the kitchen and corner bedroom.

Sophia thinks her mama would call this a junk room. There’s some organization of it, or maybe there was before Shane tried to evacuate to Atlanta. She gets the windows open and sighs at the mess. With the random pieces of outdoor equipment for camping and hunting, she figures he doesn’t store that stuff in a shed or the garage like her daddy did. He must have really been in a hurry too, because the big cabinet-style gun safe in this room is open.

She’s surprised when she gets back to the kitchen that Shane’s roused enough to be packing away the items that are better refrigerated. He’s opened the last window, the one over the kitchen sink.

“Get your exploring in?” he asks.

It makes her feel a little guilty, until he smiles, and she realizes that’s exactly why he sent her to open the windows. He _expected_ her to look around.

“Yeah. Did Carl stay here a lot?”

Shane shrugs and winces when the movement pulls at the infected chest wound. “First couple of years after I got the place, maybe once a month for a weekend. Last year or so, not so much. He was more into video games than being out on the lake.”

Sophia thinks if she had an uncle wanting to spend time with her once a month, she would have definitely chosen that over video games. But Carl didn’t have a daddy he wanted to avoid, so she guesses that’s a big difference between them.

She pushes away that thought and goes to slide the curtain back that covers the pantry. It’s maybe only half full, so there’s room for their supplies. Like Shane’s room and the bedroom used for storage, the pantry shows signs of being packed in a hurry. Things around the outside and on the higher shelves are still neatly sat in rows, but the area that has a few random canned goods, what’s left is scattered and even tipped over.

“There’s a big freezer downstairs,” Shane says. He’s looking in the freezer side of the fridge, which she can see from here is full of a mix of mostly microwaveable meals and bags of vegetables. “Should still be a good supply of venison and fish in there, for sure, if the power didn’t fail.”

“I can go check?” She’s curious now, after seeing the freezer at that first farm.

“Grab those keys. It’s in that locked storeroom under the stairs on this side.”

She pauses at the door long enough to grab the keys he indicated from a hook by the door. Once she’s downstairs, she can see there are two storerooms under each set of stairs up. She tries the key and gets the door open. Like at the farm where she heard the fridge humming, she can hear the chest freezer on one side of the room under the stairs working away.

The side of the storeroom opposite the freezer holds a bunch of fishing gear, most of which she can’t really identify because Ed wasn’t much into fishing.

There’s a thermometer on the wall with a cable leading into the freezer, displaying a -10 on the display. She opens it and peers inside. There’s a lot of white-wrapped packages with labels like deer stew meat and deer backstrap and dates on one side of the freezer. On the other side are freezer bags of fish. Figuring he’ll know better than she does if any of it’s still good, she grabs a package of stew meat and a bag of fish to take back upstairs.

Locking the door behind her, she eyes the other storeroom and the keys on the lanyard. Since he didn’t seem upset for her exploring the house, she goes around the car and unlocks that door too. This one’s full of yard care equipment, so curiosity satisfied, she relocks it and heads back upstairs.

“It was still frozen, now at least,” she tells him, placing the two packages on the counter.

“Was the thermometer still working or the alarm beeping?”

“Thermometer said negative ten and the alarm was quiet.”

“That’s the good news, then. Thing’s supposed to beep until it's reset manually, and if it’s not beeping and still working, it didn’t beep til it killed the battery.” He looks at the two packages. “If you want to leave the stew meat to thaw, we can put it in the crockpot. You like venison?”

She shrugs. “Better than squirrel. My dad hunted, but just deer. So I’ve eaten it before, most years.” Her mama always made good meals from the venison Ed brought home. She hopes Shane knows how to cook it as well as he does the beef from the farm.

“Stove’s propane, so we’re good there, but it’ll get damned hot in here if we use the oven for anything. Hot water’s propane too. I had the propane tank filled back in April, so we’re good a long while just using the stove and water heater. Come winter, we’ll have to figure something out for heat. It won’t last for that.”

The idea that they might still be here come winter appeals, because the house feels like one of the nicest places she’s ever been to, but it’s also scary. She’s caught on that he’s not entirely sure Carl’s dad will bring everyone back here. It means her mama’s out there somewhere they may not ever find her again.

“Got a while before winter, right?” she ventures. Considering her T-shirt is stuck to her back with sweat from the August heat and humidity, winter seems like forever away.

It gets her one of those tired smiles and a nod. She puts the stew meat in the fridge in an empty space and the fish in the freezer. She was right that it was mostly microwave stuff and bags of vegetables, but not all of the vegetables are store bought. That reminds her about the lady with the garden he mentioned.

“Do you think your friend’s garden is still good?”

“Maybe. We passed her house back at the curve, the one with the big flower bed around the mailbox.”

When Shane’s feeling better, she’ll ask him to take her down there. Until then, there’s more than they can both eat for weeks.

“Is the house on well water?” She remembers him saying wells needed electricity, and obviously they have that here, but city water’s different.

“Yeah. Filtered too, so you shouldn’t have to worry about boiling it. I’ll show you all that another day. I’m going to go shower and see if I can sleep off the fever. You gonna be okay if I do? Nothing should be inside the fence, and we’re up too high for walkers to reach if the fence is down somewhere to allow one in.”

If she says no, she suspects he’ll struggle to go check over the property, and he looks like he’s about to fall over. “I’ll be okay. Got stuff to put up and plenty to read.”

They took all the nursing textbooks, and he just grinned when she packed up an old Amazon shipping box with a bunch of that poor boy’s paperback books. Plus, she might not know how to cook very well, but she knows how to work a washing machine and dryer from her consumer science class.

Shane looks at the clock on the wall and rubs at the back of his head with one hand. “Alright. Wake me up about eight if I’m not up so I can take the antibiotics again.”

“I will. Do you need me to help with the bandages?” After this morning, watching him try not to yell when she cleaned all the gross infection away, she hopes they’re still okay. She isn’t sure she’s ready to do that to him again, especially after he threw up after.

“I’ll peek and see if it needs changing. Will call you if it does.”

His pace down the hall is slow and just a little bit wobbly, kind of like Ed when he’s had a few beers but isn’t actually drunk. Sophia has to force herself to let go of the counter she’s holding onto with a death grip, fighting the panic and fear that’s almost worse than running from the walkers in the woods. She wipes away tears that threaten, because she isn’t going to be a crybaby.

Shane can’t get really sick. He just _can’t_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Original plan was a time jump of sorts, a Sophia chapter covering several days worth of Shane's recovery. She had other ideas, so you get a reprieve chapter. She's probably "driving" the POV the next chapter or two, at least. The mental shifts between "Ed" and "Daddy" are on purpose.
> 
> The fans that puzzle Sophia are called Vornados, and they're "air circulators", not fans, which is why it's pointed at the wall. A lot of houses designed before A/C, especially waterfront houses, often take advantage of a long, central hallway to draw airflow through to cool it. (http:// darktidings. atwebpages. com/ hiy_index.html (remove spaces) gives a visual idea of the house and a link to the technique Shane's using to cool the house.)
> 
> I was eight or nine before I really understood that people put central A/C in houses. I thought it was just something they did in public buildings, like schools and hospitals, although I was familiar with window air units, usually in the bedrooms of elderly relatives. Considering I grew up in an area with ridiculous humidity and 100+ temps in the summers, it's just a testament to how most folks *hated* big electric bills.


	10. What Hate Really Means

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sophia cares for an increasingly sick and delirious Shane.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully, not needed, but a disclaimer just the same. Short of the ZA, please don't ever attempt to debride a wound without a medical professional.

** August 17-18, 2010 **

Sophia switches off the alarm she slipped out of Shane's room when he went back to sleep after she woke him at nine last night. His fever was holding steady just over 102, and they cleaned the wound again. This time, he took his meds and Gatorade after he threw up from the wound cleaning.

He only managed half a bowl of the vegetable soup she warmed up. She put the rest in the fridge to try again later.

She didn't think sleep would be easy, worrying about Shane barely waking for her poor attempt at nursing and going right back to bed despite the pain. But now she's glad she set the alarm.

The PDR indicates the antibiotics have to stay on schedule, so she pads down the hall to the kitchen. Until she knows how he's feeling, she isn't going to fix any food. Gathering the pills and drink, she grimaces. 

This is the last of the bottled Gatorade, but when she put away the groceries, she found three cans of powder to make more already in his pantry. She'll just refill the bottles.

She guesses his fever isn't better, because he's kicked the sheet away. At least the bandaging is still secure.

"Shane?"

He rouses, groggy and blinking. "Fee? Time's it?"

"Four in the morning. It's time for meds. Need to take your temp."

She plucks the thermometer off the nightstand and hands it over. As soon as the beep sounds, she's looking and grimaces. 102.6.

"It's higher. I want to look at your chest."

The quiet that worries her earlier persists, because he just peels back the bandaging and lets her look.

"It's still oozing," she says. "And it's darker now. Not black but close, on the edges." She brushes against his leg and he flinches. Gentle prodding shows it's the whole left leg that's painful. From the textbooks, it means the infection is widespread, not just his chest.

"What's your book say?"

"We have to get the black off." 

Debridement. It's happening a little, because the pad closest to his skin dried out and pulled some of the gross bits away. But out of all the ways mentioned, she thinks the worst is what they'll need to do.

And she thinks he realizes what it means too, because he shudders.

"If you'll bring me supplies, I'll work on it."

"It'll be safer if I do it." His hands are already unsteady. Holding anything sharp isn't going to work.

"Can I see the book?"

She trots down the hall to the living room, where the book is on the couch where she left it when she kept nodding off last night. This one is just procedures, and the debridement section made her want to throw up.

Sophia grabs the shopping bag she put all the extra medical supplies in while she's on that end of the house. Back in Shane's room, he's in the bathroom, so she waits and rereads the rather intimidating words.

The wobbly walk she noticed last night is still there when Shane makes his way back to the bed. He reads the section she points out and checks another about burns before nodding.

"There's a tool box in the closet in the smallest bedroom. Should be a bunch of razor blades in it from when I was working on stripping caulk. Might be best to boil them," he suggests.

Sophia finds the toolbox and the blades. She tries to imagine holding onto the little blades and grabs the scraper too. Dumping several blades, the scraper,and the oversized medical tweezers in a pot on the stove, she sets it to boil, pacing nervously. She isn't sure she is really brave enough for this part, but there's no one else.

He's pulled the bedding even further out of the way when she returns and put a layer of towels down. They irrigated his chest on the floor last night, but this might take longer.

"Good. You cooled the water," Shane says, looking at the stock pot she's carrying. Most of the ice melted, but a few chunks remain.

She nods and sits the pot down on the nightstand on a potholder. "I figured we didn't want to wait on it to be cool on its own."

"Sophia, you don't have to do this."

She guesses he knows she's scared. "Your hands are shaking. You might hurt yourself worse."

Shane studies her for a long moment before nodding. He lays down on the bed, reaching up to grip the headboard. 

In the textbook, there's supposed to be pain meds given: the shots like the dentist uses. Instead, he just endures as she clears away the discharge with gauze soaked in alcohol. It takes three of the plain gauze pads before she's soaked it all away.

Shane's shaking and she didn't think anyone could hold their body so rigid without breaking something. She bites her lip as she dips a gloved hand into the water and fishes out a blade and the scraper. It attaches easier than she expected.

After saying his hands are shaking, it figures that hers start once she's also got the tweezers.

Shane opens his eyes and watches her carefully. "You don't gotta do this."

"I can do it."

Her hands stop shaking under his inquiring gaze, so he nods and takes a deep breath.

The next ten minutes will replace running on her own from walkers as the most traumatic thing she's ever done until the end of her life, she thinks. As much as he's fought for quiet when she's cleaning the wound, he loses the battle when the razor meets flesh. She fights the urge to throw up, holding the ugly, dying edges of the wound while she slices them away.

Through it all, even as he gives voice to the pain of having bits of him cut away, he never lets go his grip on the headboard to stay out of her way. She can see tears streaming down the side of his face.

When there's no more of the blackening flesh, she drops the scraper onto the pile of discarded medical supplies. The wound is bleeding again, so she irrigates it before pressing a pad of gauze against it. Holding it down firmly, she can feel the hitches in his breathing and his heart rate slowly returning to normal.

"I think I got it all." 

He doesn't open his eyes this time. "Good girl."

It's husky, his voice deep from the strain, and she blinks away tears. He's always so easy with praise, casual words of thanks or good jobs that feel like treasure she's gathering close. Even her mama isn't so generous, always too wary of drawing Ed's attention on them both.

They wait in silence for the bleeding to ease. When ten minutes pass on the little wrist watch he gave her, she lifts the edge of the gauze. The bleeding is barely an ooze. She carefully wipes his skin clean.

She doesn't know enough, even after the textbooks, to be sure, but she thinks they would never be able to stitch this wound now. She cut away too much for the edges to meet again. It's raw and ugly and she doesn't begin to understand how his body can heal it.

Glad he got extra tubes of the antibiotic cream at the pharmacy to add to the partials they collected from the cabin and farm, she applies the ointment and one of the alginate dressings. Once she's finished all the bandaging, he shudders and rolls, throwing up into the trash can. There's not much other than dry heaves, because he hasn't drank anything yet.

"Maybe you should take the better pain meds now? It's got Tylenol in it, too."

"Yeah, probably should." Shane manages to take the two pain pills and the antibiotics. 

"If you can let me get the towels, I can wash them. I got all the other dirty clothes washed." Plus the bedding in Carl's room, because it smelled dusty and she craved sleeping on fresh sheets.

He manages to free the wet, blood soiled towels and pass them to her without a fuss. She takes them to the washing machine and dumps them inside and starts the load.

When she returns to clean up the mess of used medical supplies, he's leaned against the pillows and sipping the Gatorade. His skin is sallow, making the rash she can see along one side stand out. There's still too many things that could be making him sick and no way to run tests.

"When did you have a tetanus shot last?" That was a frightening section to read about.

"Last year, actually. Cut my arm on a piece of rusty metal chasing a suspect down."

Probably not that one, at least.

"Do you think you can eat anything yet?"

Shane grimaces. "Let's see how the Gatorade settles first."

"Do you need me to bring you anything?" He doesn't even have a television in the bedroom, not that it would work anymore except with DVDs.

"Nah. Probably gonna sleep more. You doing okay?"

Sophia nods. "I've got books and food and no walkers anywhere near."

That earns her a wan smile. "Easy to be content these days, huh, kiddo?"

She smiles and takes the bag from the trash can with all the used supplies and carries it to the big trash can. It's starting to get light outside, so she debates breakfast versus going back to sleep herself. A full tummy wins out, so she sets the kettle to boil.

When she returns to Shane's room to replace the trash can liner, he's asleep, but at least he drank half the bottle of Gatorade. It's a bigger one, 32 ounces, so that's a decent amount, she guesses. She's not entirely sure how to tell what's enough.

Pulling the sheet over him, she wishes she could pull the curtains closed. But he needs the cooler air more than he needs a dark room, so she leaves them alone. Stopping by her room, she sets the alarm for ten a.m., when he needs to take meds again.

The kettle begins the whine that signals it's going to whistle. She gets to it before it gets loud. One of the boxes they gathered at the two farms was instant cream of wheat. It's a banana walnut one, not her favorite maple brown sugar, but it's breakfast.

Even though it's already warm, she makes a cup of cocoa too. Sitting at the table with a normal breakfast, she doesn't eat. Instead, she covers her face and cries all the tears she didn't when she had to hurt the only person left in her world to make him better.

She wants her mama more now than she did that first night hidden in that tiny pantry in the dark.

~*~*~*~*~*~

At ten, she's jolted out of where she fell asleep in the couch after finally eating her breakfast. It takes her a minute to recognize the alarm beeping down the hall. She shuts it off on the way by.

Shane's pushed the sheet away again. There's still a rash, but it doesn't look worse than before. His breathing is shallow and labored, and he makes a whimpering sound when she touches his forehead like her mama does when she's sick.

His skin feels like it is on fire. 

He doesn't wake even as she peels back the bandaging, wanting to cry in relief that the wound seems unchanged. It's still red and oozing fluid, but it's a clear fluid, like the book says it should be. She tapes the bandaging back down.

"Shane. C'mon, you gotta wake up to take your medicine."

As much as she hates it, she shakes him a little. When there's no response other than mumbled protest, she goes and gets a bowl of water, remembering her mama wiping her skin down when she had a bad fever. She sops a wet wash cloth against his skin.

It wakes him up finally. "Fee?"

She wasn't sure earlier that he was trying to say her name while groggy, but now she is.

"Yeah. It's time for meds again."

He lets her take his temperature, barely awake, and doesn't ask what she sees.

102.9.

Worried, she fumbles for the meds, starting with the pain med first. It she can get that in him, maybe he'll be able to wake up more. With a lot of pleases and repeating herself, she actually gets him to take all the pills he needs. 

She paces for an hour between bouts of sponging his overheated skin before trying to wake him again.

It's easier this time. He blinks at her and drinks obediently, but only as long as she insists. She keeps at it until the bottle is empty. 

The PDR says the hydrocodone can make people sleep. She hopes that's the primary reason he can't seem to fully wake up. She thinks she may give him regular Tylenol next time, just to see, if his pain isn't awful.

After going to the bathroom and getting something to drink of her own, she's hit with a rather horrifying thought. What if he needs the bathroom like this? Deciding not to borrow trouble until it comes, she mixes up Gatorade and refills the three empty bottles.

Putting two in the fridge, she takes the other back to Shane's room along with a book. She can't bring herself to stay very far away.

~*~*~*~*~*~

They repeat the process every six hours. She takes breaks to feed herself and mix more Gatorade each time a bottle is empty. Otherwise, she camps out at the foot of his bed, leaned against pillows taken from her own.

His fever dips down two hours after each dose of meds, but as soon as they wear off, it's back. Never as high as the mid-morning one, thankfully. Meds, Gatorade, sleep. Repeat.

Shane's nightmares begin after nightfall. 

He begs and pleads, mostly with Rick, for things she can't always make out. He worries about where Carl is, pleading with his brother to keep the boy safe. He cries about being a killer, begging forgiveness of someone named Otis. Once, he has a conversation with his mother, seeming confused because she's been dead for years.

He soothes when she sponges his skin, so she tries that when he gets too distressed. She's afraid to sleep, in case he gets worse while she's not watching.

If he loses the battle his body is fighting against the infection, she'll be alone again.

If he dies, she doesn't think she can live with being by herself. 

In the dimly lit bedroom, curled up and watching Shane caught in another round of pleading with his brother to keep Carl safe, she thinks she understands what the word hate really means for the first time.

Sometimes she hated her daddy, when he was drunk and angry and being Ed the Asshole rather than her daddy. But she loved him too. It harder to remember the good times now, when he drank less and smiled more. When she tried to really hate him, it never felt right.

But now, watching someone else suffer who was left behind to die by Rick Grimes, she remembers they aren't the only ones. 

Merle Dixon got left too, and he cut off his own hand to escape being left to be eaten. He ran from walkers too. How scared would you have to be to cut off your own hand? To run and keep running, not even to your only brother.

She got left, and she's the lucky one. She didn't tell Shane how awful the first night was. She doesn't want to admit that she changed to the boy clothes at that first abandoned house after she wet herself because she was too afraid to stop running even when her bladder felt like bursting. It still makes her skin crawl with shame. But she still has all her body parts.

And here's Shane, who loves Rick and Carl so much Carl has his own room here and his nightmares center around them both. Left behind, injured and sick, running from walkers in the night. She's old enough to know a stab wound when she sees it.

Shane blames himself for that, says he did bad things. Killed people, wanted to kill Rick.

The way she sees it, everything started falling apart after Rick Grimes came back from the dead. The team trapped in Atlanta and a man left behind to die? He caused them to be trapped.

The quarry attack. The blown up CDC building he insisted they go to, when Shane wanted to go west. Going hungry on the highway, driving aimlessly when she and Shane got all the way here with no problem and plenty of food.

She doesn't trust Rick to keep her mama safe, not really. She doesn't know Daryl well enough to trust he can, either. But she does remember that when the quarry was attacked, Shane put himself in between the walkers and not just Carl and his mama, but Sophia and hers too.

Hating Ed was hard.

Hating Rick? It's as easy as breathing.

Sophia thinks if she ever sees Rick Grimes again, she just might shoot him and hope Shane forgives her for it.

Dawn lends filtered light to the room and she sees Shane sweating for the first time, and there's no more fever. Careful not to disturb his wound, she curls up against him and lets the exhaustion win.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some handwavy medical here. While not impossible, Shane living through the infection with only oral antibiotics and hydration would be improbable.
> 
> The symptoms given are for streptococcal toxic shock syndrome. Most ladies know what TSS is, but there's non-menstrual versions too. Caused by a staph bacteria, 50% of patients die even with ICU care. Strep is 5% fatal. 
> 
> Since Shane started taking heavy antibiotics early on, the handwavy science is that he could pull through on a systemic strep infection once they removed the main source of infection.
> 
> Future chapters will likely speed up time and return to Shane's POV as primary.


	11. Trio

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A week after his brush with death, Shane's trip with Sophia to gather fresh food adds to their little group's number.

** August 25, 2010 **

Shane spends the week after his brush with dying of infection trying his best not to give Sophia any reason to worry. Waking up with an entire day missing and her curled up asleep against him, makes him riddled with guilt. Instead of protecting her, he endangered her, because he never told her he would turn if he died.

When he rectified his mistake, she didn't quite meet his eyes, but wasn't angry. Her quiet admission that she probably wouldn't have put him down still makes his blood run cold.

Instead of stewing in guilt, he turns to giving her the skills to survive without him, should the worst ever happen. The trip from bedroom to living room and kitchen seems like a mile the first two days, but he makes it. He teaches her to cook from a kitchen chair, to look after her gun at the coffee table, and to develop an exercise routine with and without the home gym equipment.

This morning is the first morning he can run a mile on the treadmill. His chest isn't healed, because that will probably take months. But it's no longer a gaping puncture wound.

He eyes the wound in the mirror as he prepares to apply the fresh bandage after his shower. It doesn't look like any scab he's ever seen, but he thinks it legitimately qualifies as a scab now. He isn't ready to leave it uncovered, because catching the delicate protective scab on anything sounds terrifying.

Not to mention Sophia might actually shoot him if he's careless with what she went through hell to help heal.

Pulling a shirt on, he rubs a hand across the nearly two weeks' growth of beard, debating shaving, but decides against it. The less he looks like his old self, the easier it is to face the mirror. He'll trim it up later.

"You ready, Fee?" he calls out as he readies his gear into pockets and on his belt.

When she appears in his doorway, he thinks no one would ever recognize Sophia as the timid girl from the quarry. 

Her shaggy punk haircut is covered by an Atlanta Braves cap. She's wearing neat cargo pants, a denim long-sleeve shirt he recognizes as one of his over a gray JROTC T-shirt, and the sturdy leather work boots from the first farm. Most importantly, she's got her little Walther in its holster on her belt on one side and her hunting knife on the other.

"Gotta get you some extra magazines for that," he tells her. 

She shrugs and pats one of her pockets. "Got a pouch of extra ammo in the meantime."

"You ain't gonna leave me much to teach you at this rate." He sorts through the pocket knives that are collected up in his nightstand drawer. 

"I think there's still a lot to learn."

She's smiling when he passes her two of the small knives. "One for your pocket. Other for your boot. Use the clip on the second to hook to the top of the boot, under your pant leg."

Sophia kneels and settles the knife, looking up at him for confirmation. He nods before motioning her over to the gun safe half hidden under the bed.

"Didn't take everything with me because we were supposed to be going to a government installation. Code is 0410. That ever fails, there's a key hidden in the base of the lamp on the other side of the bed. Got it?"

"Got it. 0410 and lamp base."

"Smart girl." He keys in the code. The safe is more of a vault model than the simpler ones he knows most people use. 

Three slots for handguns, two of which are still occupied. He leaves the heavier Glock 22, taking the small Ruger LCP he bought for ankle carry until a deputy's negligent discharge of an ankle gun got them banned off department policy.

"This is a .380. You could probably fire it pretty easy, and we'll practice all the guns when we get the chance." For now, he slides it into the ankle holster attached to his right boot.

"It wouldn't fit my ankle, would it?"

"Probably not comfortably, and you'd need different pants to cover it." She's taller than Carl, but a bit delicate in build, and still at least eight inches shorter than Shane is. "But we'll try it out sometime."

Even giving her a boot knife isn't truly useful yet, but it's a backup she should always have. He stops by the big gun safe and takes his rifle and replenishes ammo for all three guns he's carrying. He makes sure she knows the code is the same for the cabinet as the bedroom safe and where the emergency key is hidden.

He follows her to the kitchen where she's got a backpack ready. They aren't going far, but poor prior planning makes him wary of going out without water or a good first aid kit.

"Are we taking the car to your friend's house?"

Shane shakes his head. "Boat. Until we know how clear her property is, water access is safer and less likely to lead anything back here."

She shoulders the backpack he can't carry and waits patiently. "Should we lock up?"

"Honestly, locks don't really stop anyone wanting in, so no sense tempting anything being broken." They've seen no sign of people so far, and he hopes that luck holds for now.

Sophia follows him down the stairs and then to the boat. He'll need to be conservative in movement today, since he's not up to full strength by any stretch of the imagination.

"Should have asked before now, but can you swim, kiddo?" Carl's life jacket should fit either way, but best to know if she can handle the water.

"No, I can't." She sets aside the backpack and buckles on the life jacket while he checks the boat's still in working order after months idle. The motor starts up just fine, and despite not being able to swim, she hops into the boat confidently.

"Take the seat by the motor, kiddo. Gonna teach you to drive it."

It's one of the ideas that plagued him, how trapped she was with him sidelined. Teaching her to drive the Bug will take longer, but the boat? That's a lot easier.

Like most of the times he's offered to teach her, she grins and plunks the backpack down between her feet as she sits. He walks her through the controls and snags his own life jacket as he unties the boat and steps in.

"Alright. Give it a try."

It's jerky and erratic, but she manages to pull away from the dock. 

"Head out into the lake. Gloria's dock is up that way, to the east, but we'll get you some practice first."

After ten minutes spent navigating the oxbow, he directs her back east. "Hers is easy to remember. Last one before the creek. Creek's deep enough to get to the river, but we won't try the river just yet."

"But we will eventually?"

"Good fishing out there, so yeah. But running the boat on the river is different than the lake."

She takes the idea of needing more practice with an easy acceptance. He doesn't even have to tell her to ease off the throttle when they near the dock. He ties off the boat and climbs out, offering her a hand once she shuts off the motor.

Gloria's boat is still docked, a similar enough model to his that he reminds himself they should take it back if the motor will start. They both leave their life jackets behind, taking only the backpack.

"Her place is only fenced around the gardens, so keep a close eye out."

"Do you know what happened to her?"

"She died at the hospital, early on. Lived alone, so if we encounter any walkers, it'll be roamers. Maybe other neighbors." 

He's not sure what everyone else's status is out of the six other homes on the road. He told the two neighbors he saw on the way in to grab some of his things to head to Atlanta.

It's a higher climb to Gloria's place, because she's high enough off the water to not need the pilings that the three houses west of her do. The trail winds up a hillside before levelling off.

"Wow. That's a lot of vegetables."

Shane laughs. "Told you she sold at the farmer markets."

While Gloria's place isn't big farm, certainly not on the scale of the peanut farm, she did a decent little business in the ten acres between her house and the lake.

"Doubt it's all still good, but some will be, right?"

"Yeah, some will be. We'll clear the house and then check out the gardens. Take what we can use and come back as we need."

Although they stay alert, there's no movement anywhere on the place. The doors to the chicken coop and pen are open and no chickens appear, so he assumes someone set the birds free or took them. He fishes the hidden key from its hiding place and unlocks the back door after raps at the kitchen window don't summon anything.

The house is bigger than his, a sprawling old brick structure too big for the sole occupant. But Gloria raised her family and sent them on with lives that didn't include rural King County. They clear each room, upstairs and down.

"No electricity here."

"She had a diesel generator. Probably never even turned on since no one was here when the power failed." Her GMC pickup is still in the garage, since Gloria went to the hospital by ambulance.

"So don't open the fridge. Got it."

"She's got a basement of stuff she's canned from the garden. We'll come back another day and load all of it up, but you can look and see if anything is needed sooner."

He does check the basement first with her, before returning to the kitchen. The other farms, those were easy to explore. This one has the same echoes as Rick's home. He keeps expecting Gloria to pop into the kitchen, claiming he'll waste away to nothing if he just doesn't take the extra pie she just 'happened' to make.

"You okay, Shane?"

Sophia's back, a couple of jars in her arms and a length of onions twisted in pantyhose over one arm. She looks worried as she spots him by the sink.

"Just a little weird being here with Gloria gone." He opens a drawer and hands her a few dish towels to wrap the jars in. "Pickles, I understand. Sauerkraut?"

"Same reason as pickles. Plus I like sauerkraut."

That's a good enough reason for him. He's got no strong feelings either way on the food.

"She has a cat flap."

That reminds Shane of the damned demon cat. "He might be hiding somewhere. Name's Lucius, if you see him. Massive black tom cat with no tail."

"Like the Harry Potter character?"

Shane snorts. "Anything's possible. He came with the name from the shelter when she adopted him. Mean bastard would be better named Lucifer."

Sophia giggles as she finishes packing away the jars along with several cans of evaporated milk from the pantry. She pulls out two of the cloth shopping bags to use in the garden. "Maybe that means he's okay. Cats can climb and hide, and they can hunt to fees themselves."

"Likely so." They head back outside and he relocks the door, but pockets the key. "Let's go check out the gardens."

Not all of it is vegetable gardens. A good portion is blueberry bushes, and those are past harvest. But Sophia collects a few remaining fruits from the row of peach trees while Shane keeps an eye out.

When they move on to the garden, she collects more okra, tomatoes, and zucchini easily, ignoring the spiders running free in the garden with ease. She avoids the hot peppers in favor of big bell peppers and adds a cabbage to her bag with more glee than any kid should favor a vegetable.

It's when she kneels to select a cantelope that Shane's life gets infinitely more complicated.

"Hi, kitty!"

This is where Shane's not a stupid man. He's spent his entire adult life observing the weird, inevitable partnership of women and cats. So, he knows they're taking that asshole cat home even before Sophia's ball cap pops back above the plants.

She rounds the row of plants, shopping bags of fresh vegetables over both shoulders and her arms full of fifteen pounds of purring American Bobtail cat.

"We can't leave him by himself with his owner gone," she says. Those blue eyes plead skillfully, and even if he were inclined to argue that this particular cat is a bad idea, he can't go against her wish to save any living being at this point. 

"You'll be a good boy, right, Lucy?" she cajoles further. The cat yawns, licking his chops, and watching Shane through narrow yellow eyes.

He sighs, as there's no point in fighting the inevitable. "Let's go get his damned cat food then."

After a trip to the garage, Shane follows girl and cat down to the boats. When the cat seems willing to plop his fluffy ass in Shane's own boat and stay, Shane checks over Gloria's boat and the engine comes to life easily. Sophia gets his own boat underway and he follows her slow and steady pace back home.

At the dock, the cat leaps out and darts off to explore, leaving Shane to shake his head while Sophia giggles. She watches him tie off the second boat and copies the process on Shane's.

Sophia kneels and trails her fingers in the water. "Would you teach me to swim?"

He considers the time left in the season versus his chest healing. "Once it's safe for me to go in the water, yeah. Water's only about five feet deep until you get twenty feet out from the dock."

They're halfway to the house when Sophia groans. "What about a litter box?"

Shane laughs, but he appreciates she thought of it before they were all the way home. "He's been trained to go outside. That's why Gloria had that cat flap. These two bags of dry food will last for a while because he's used to hunting and we can feed him scrap meat from fishing."

Satisfied that her new pet's necessities are covered, she hops ahead, seeming carefree for the first time since he found her in the cabin. She calls out for the cat and it romps up, behaving far more like a housecat than menace. If he's lucky, that attitude will stick, but he doubts it.

Doesn't really matter. Cat makes Sophia happy, so he stays.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> C'mon, at some point Shane was going to end up with something adopted with a teenage girl around, right? 
> 
> Something softer and sweeter after the heavier chapters.


	12. Not This One, Too

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A day spent preparing for their future leads Shane to finally put a different name to his guardianship.

**September 1, 2010**

Slowly and carefully, Shane and Sophia have investigated and cleared all eight properties on his road. He got lucky that the only two houses with recognizable neighbors were ones he didn't know well. Wherever the missing ones are, he hopes they fared better than the quarry group did, but he doubts it.

More importantly, the five walkers put down give Sophia more experience with putting them down quietly. He's hoping to find a suppressor for her Walther at some point, but in the meantime, she's gotten over any squeamishness about walkers. Even better, she's really good at tripping the damn things to even the playing field.

Today, since his chest feels a little closer to healed and not like the scabbing will shred if he flexes and lifts anything heavier than his rifle, they're going to start clearing the supplies out of the neighborhood. Knowing Gloria's house will be a gold mine for food and she has a truck they'll need, they start there.

Sophia ties off the boat and waits patiently for him when he studies the water around the dock.

"Fee. See the snake sunning on the bank over there?"

She tenses, but nods. "Good snake or bad snake?"

"Just a snake, kiddo, but if you're asking if he's venomous, he isn't. Most of the time, you don't want to get close enough to tell, cos then they're scared. But see the stripes on his mouth, like little tattoos?"

"Yeah."

"Means he's a water snake, not a cottonmouth. They tend to be a bit ornery when you get too close, and the bite hurts, but they aren't venomous."

"And the venomous one?"

"Looks like he's off to rob a store, with black eye bands like a mask, but we shouldn't see any cottonmouths this far north. We've got copperheads, timber rattlers, and pygmy rattlers here, which is why I told you to always wear good boots and denim pants. It won't always stop a bite, but it helps compared to shorts and sandals."

"If we get bit, what do we do?"

"With no hospital for antivenom, probably take a lot of pain meds and wait it out, if it's a copperhead. That's possible, just painful as hell. Buddy in college got bit and didn't get antivenom, but it was painful as hell and took weeks to heal." 

"And if it's a rattler?"

"Same thing, but I don't know how much worse it would be. They're definitely more dangerous than the copperheads." He's just glad they're too far north for coral snakes. "We'll stop by the ranger's house the next time we head to town. See if he's got some snake pamphlets."

Sophia watches the water snake intently for a little while, and he lets her. No sense in her being scared of snakes when most she encounters will be these fat bastards trying to gorge on fish while it's warm. When they start walking on the dock, the snake finally darts off, its big body moving into the water and off toward the creek.

"It's kind of pretty," she says.

"Yeah, suppose it is."

They head up the hill and find everything undisturbed, aside from obvious forays by birds into the garden. When they step inside the house, Sophia sets down her backpack on the table and surveys the room.

"Are we just going to take the food?"

"We'll start with the food, since we know we can use that. Then extra linens, cleaning supplies, and so on. Stuff we can't just go to the store for." Come winter, they may need the extra bedding, especially.

"I'll start in the basement. She had flattened boxes down there I can use.”

With the door locked and the neighborhood reasonably remote and deserted, Shane heads upstairs. Gloria was taller than Sophia, but some of her work clothes might adapt, and the girl might be due a growth spurt. He packs those away in a rolling suitcase, wishing the boots were the right size to give the girl an extra pair.

In the jewelry box, he finds the key to the basic gun cabinet Gloria kept downstairs and pockets it. She didn't hunt, but he knows she had at least a shotgun and a .22 for pest control. The other three upstairs bedrooms are dusty and haven't been lived in for years, so he returns downstairs.

Sophia's already got two boxes of glass mason jars filled with food upstairs. He grabs the truck keys from their place on the counter, glad Gloria didn't keep them in her purse like a lot of women. The GMC is old enough he could probably hotwire it, but he doesn't want to.

The truck starts up and has over half a tank, plenty for what they'll be using it for. He cuts the engine and heads back inside to load as Sophia packs. It takes them two hours to load everything useful, which includes a variety of kitchen utensils he doesn't own, a big pressure canner along with a couple of Gloria's canning books, and all the unused supplies for the canner.

"Gloria must have been preparing for the summer harvest," he remarks as he eyes the truck cab, now filled except for the driver's seat with plastic wrapped packages of mason jars. Since Sophia is going to take the boat home, he figures they might as well use all the space.

"Is that why she had buckets of sugar?"

"Probably. Pretty sure the jam recipes use a lot. She wasn't much into altering them for sugar content. She sold them along with the veggies."

They both eye the chest freezer in the garage with trepidation, but Sophia has her hands on her hips in a way he's already learned means she's thinking something over.

"We could use that, right?"

"Probably. Need the trailer from next door though cos getting it up on the truck isn't something I would attempt without two healthy grown men." It's a much larger model of chest freezer, compared to his mid-size one.

She sighs and reaches for a package of trash bags on the shelf and shakes one out. Amazingly, there isn't as terrible a smell as he expects when she opens it. 

"Huh. Seems she kept everything in plastic." The meat wrapped in freezer paper like Shane stores what he hunts would put off a much fouler odor. But Gloria's meat seems to be all shrink wrapped, either from the butcher shop in town or with her Food Saver that's still in the kitchen.

"I'm not complaining." Sophia plunges in, dumping packages of spoiled meat into the trash bag.

He reaches for one of the plastic tupperware types of containers and dumps the defrosted peas into the trash. "Might as well wash these and reuse them."

It doesn't take long to clear things out, and they leave the two trash bags in the barrel out back. He doesn't want to leave Sophia alone long enough to hook up the trailer, so they stick with the original plan for now. He watches her climb in the boat from the top of the hill, before jogging back to the truck. 

Shane backs the truck up to the stairs. He can see Sophia coming up from the dock, looking proud of herself for the solo trip.

"See any more snakes?"

"No. Just a couple of turtles on that one sunken tree by the next dock up. Can we go fishing later?"

He's created a bit of a monster, teaching the girl to fish. They started at the dock, but from the first eating sized catfish Sophia reeled in, she loves fishing. He figures after being lost and hungry, she sees the skill as something far more important than just a hobby.

"Sure. You gonna get tired of fish for supper eventually, though."

"Can always freeze it if I do, right?"

"That we can do."

Shane studies the area under the house, considering the big freezer. It won't fit in either storeroom, because they're just wide enough for things like his own smaller freezer and the reel mower. But he doesn't figure the shaded area is much different than the garage it's in now, so he'll just have to build a platform for it to keep it above the known water line, like his has.

That issue solved, he turns to helping Sophia unload the truck. Just clearing the food left behind in the neighborhood will keep him and Sophia fed a good long while, especially if they keep fishing and he can get some hunting in. Maybe even the whole winter.

Once GMC is back on the road, Shane puts it in park and grins at Sophia. "Want to drive?"

Even though he told her he would teach her, she looks surprised. "Really?"

"Said I would teach you, didn't I?" She grins and nods. "Learn to drive these old standards and automatics will be a breeze, least as long as the gas holds out." 

Less than a year on that, for the diesel. The rest will probably be bad by winter, which reminds him he should start treating what they're collecting.

"I'll show you first. Down to the end of the road, then let you drive us back." It'll take the long stretch after the curve to hit third, anyway.

Once he's sure she's paying attention, he shows her the gear shift. "This is an old three on the tree. Column shifter, not a floor shifter like the Bug. Biggest thing is to make sure you're sitting still when you shift into first so you don't grind the gears.

"It's an H pattern. First is down and to you. Away and up is second. Away and down is third. Reverse is toward you and down. Got that?"

Sophia repeats the gears, nodding.

"If you've seen movies where they shift gears fast, forget all that with these older vehicles. Slow and steady on the shifter and the clutch." He demonstrates, putting the truck in first gear and easing forward.

She watches avidly as he gets to second by the curve and downshifts back. They make third in time to slow back down for the stop sign.

"You get the idea?"

"I think so." Shane hops out of the driver's seat. "Slide over and I'll come around."

After a few false starts and frustration at timing the clutch release, she gets the coordination down. They take about a dozen trips up and down his road before he finally directs her to the Cooper place. He takes over driving again once they've unloaded and hooked up the lawn service trailer Vic Cooper used for his business.

"That thing's going to be real heavy, isn't it? Is it safe for you to lift?"

"Don't worry, Fee. Not aiming to pick it up. Weighs about two hundred pounds."

Shane grins at her as he bumps the casters with a boot and gives the unloaded freezer a push. It moves a good three feet and Sophia laughs.

"Help me put the ramps down again." They pull them in place, and it does take some effort to get the freezer up ramps designed for a lawnmower. Nothing they can't manage.

Sophia straps down the freezer under his directions with the straps he kept when they unloaded the lawn equipment. They probably don't need it for such a short trip, but better safe than sorry. She tosses the bag of empty, dirty freezer containers on the trailer too. 

"C'mon, kiddo. We get this home and cleaned and I'll show you how to run the boat out on the river today."

With that promise dangling, she's grinning as she climbs in the passenger seat.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

"Cat, you best be glad the girl likes you," Shane tells Lucius. The big tom just yawns as if he didn't just flick the piece of raw fish Shane tossed him into the water instead of eating it. "You fill up on what she gave you, or is it just me?"

Sophia is already up at the house, frying up the catfish they caught up by the old highway bridge on the river. Shane's finishing off the bass for the freezer.

For some unfathomable reason, Lucius is sitting on the dock watching him instead of following Sophia around like a cat-shaped shadow. He tosses another fishhead to the cat, just because he can, and returns to filleting the bass.

Now that he's not looking directly at Lucius, the damned cat grabs up the fish head and runs off up toward the house. "Crazy little asshole," Shane mutters, shaking his head.

By the time he takes the gut bucket out into the lake and dumps it to keep anything from coming to dig up the remains, the catfish is done.

"Can you mix up hush puppies?" Sophia's happier with the outdoor fryer and grill than Shane thinks he's ever been since he bought them. She's burned a couple of things, but they're not hurting for fresh veggies so practice is practice. 

There's plenty of the small propane tanks all over the damn county they can collect up. Might as well save the house's propane for hot water while they can, and keep the house cooler too.

Once he's bagged the bass and put it in the freezer, he heads back with the small bowl of hush puppy batter. She's watching the slices of zucchini and eggplant intently, flipping them with tongs as he drops spoonfuls of batter into the hot oil.

"I'll be sad when we run out of oil," she says. "It'll spoil eventually, right, even if we collect jugs and bottles?"

"Think so. Goes rancid after a while. Guess we'll just learn to like grilled fish by then."

She flips her vegetables with tongs and sighs. Her mood seems a little off.

"You okay, sweetheart?"

Sophia shrugs. "It's just it seems like there's no one else left. How did we get lucky?"

"Might be others out there. We're a little out of the way here." He knows he's avoiding looking even for Rick's friend until he feels like he can deal with any threats. The man was friendly then. Might not be now.

"And if they don't come back here?"

No need to define who 'they' is.

"Then we keep figuring things out. Got food and water, even if we eventually lose power. Better off than the city."

"And if they come back but my mama isn't with them? She wasn't strong before, not like the other ladies." She drops slices of vegetables onto a plate. "What happens to me then?"

Ah, hell.

He hooks the basket with the hush puppies on the side of the fryer and cuts the fryer and grill both off.

"Fee? Look at me."

It takes her a minute, but she finally looks up from the food. Her bottom lip is trembling.

"It doesn't matter if your mama is with them or not. You've always got a place with me, kiddo."

She flings her arms around him, hugging tight enough it would have been painful a week ago and still isn't entirely comfortable. Shane hugs her back with more confidence he might be entitled to, but he's lost too much.

With what he's done, Rick and the others will fight him tooth and nail over keeping her guardianship. But his brother is already taking one child from him. 

He doesn't get this one, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all knew this was coming right? 😁


	13. Going Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shane and Sophia venture into town, leading Sophia to the rescue of another survivor.

**September 8, 2010**

Shane steps out onto the deck and around to the side now designated as ‘Sophia’s Garden’. There’s not a lot of viable places to grow plants currently on Shane’s property, either due to rocky soil or tree cover. But among the things they took from Gloria’s property was her rather vast stash of seeds and enough books and pamphlets to open their own farm store.

He’s pretty sure Sophia stayed up all night the night after their emotional fish fry, reading the book she’s been lugging around since as if it were a holy relic. While going back and forth to Gloria’s garden is good for now, those crops are slowly dying off. Some will reseed and grow wild, by Sophia’s estimate. Others won’t, and she’s determined to add to their food supply.

Thus how the deck facing the road is now divided into two double rows of raised vegetable beds, all neatly planted according to Sophia’s book about square foot gardening. Shane can see notes in her neat, orderly handwriting for each section on index cards in little Ziploc baggies. He supposes he is going to get used to eating vegetables he normally wouldn’t, if her project is successful.

From what he can see so far, she’s got seedlings in many of the beds already, the little seeds sprouting easily in good soil and warm weather.

“Everything sprouted yet?” he asks. Since some of the beds are planted differently than others, he’s not sure how many seedlings he should be seeing.

“So far, yeah. I’m not going to thin anything out just yet. Not til they’re bigger.”

“You’re the current expert.” He nudges the little fronds of green along the outside edge of the beds, the parts that face the little aisle she left down the middle. “What’re these?”

“Marigolds, mostly. They help keep away some kinds of bugs.” Sophia touches one gently herself. “And they’re pretty.”

Shane ruffles her shaggy hair. “Fee? You want to plant things we can’t eat, you just gotta tell me what you need.”

She looks thoughtful from her perch on the edge of one of the beds. “Most flowers you plant in the spring.”

“You got flower seeds in all of Gloria’s stash?”

“Some. Mostly what she grew around the house.”

“We need to make a trip to the hardware store and clear them out. Garden center on the east side of town that might still have plants and such.” They didn’t have to go into town for the supplies for the raised beds, thanks to the landscaping neighbor whose trailer they have parked up near the gate now.

“Couldn’t hurt to look around more, now that you’re feeling better, right?”

She’s right, because they can’t avoid town much longer. He’s already been thinking of the fact that they’re nearly beyond the limit of collecting useful gasoline. There’s still some to be siphoned in the neighbors’ vehicles, but not until he can obtain more gas cans. He’s already topped off the truck and filled the few he found at the neighbor houses.

“Can’t hurt at all. Need to know what our resources are. You done here for now?”

Sophia nods, brushing her hands off on her cargos. “Just need to grab our gear. We taking the truck?”

“Not this trip. We’ll take the Bug until we know more about what’s going on out there.” They didn’t see any large numbers of walkers in their brief side trip into town to check out Rick’s house, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there. “Bug’s more maneuverable than the truck.”

It doesn’t take them long to load the Bug up for the day. They can still haul a decent amount of supplies, and they’ll save the truck for actual supply trips versus recon ones.

On the way back into town, he goes back over the directions, even though he’s pretty sure she memorized it on the way out. If they get separated or something happens to him, she’s got to be able to get back to their little safe haven.

“Hey, Shane?” she ventures as they enter town. “Y’all had a library here, right?”

“Yeah. You needing new reading material or this for more research?”

“Both, maybe.”

He just grins at the bashful answer. “Alright. We’ll put that on the list to see if it’s clear today.”

Shane pulls up at the Sheriff’s Department first. He knows Rick cleared out the guns and ammo, but his partner wouldn’t think of some of the other things that’ll be useful to him and Sophia. He doesn’t have his keys, but thanks to Rick putting Leon down in the parking lot outside, frisking the deputy’s remains gives him exactly what he needs.

“Stay close. Rick left the building clear, but it might not have stayed that way.”

She nods, alert as always, knife in hand. In another life, this girl would have made one hell of a deputy one day. They clear the building easily despite the maze, finding it as empty of life or undead as Rick left it.

“What are you taking?” Sophia asks as Shane grabs a gear bag one of the other deputies left behind and dumps it.

He flashes her a grin as he unlocks the cabinet where they store the tasers and pepper spray. “Not everything you use to disable a living person has to be a gun.” 

She accepts the taser he hands her and inspects it carefully before threading the holster onto her belt, followed by the pepper spray. “Gonna need a police belt soon,” she jokes.

“Hate to break it to you, kiddo, but King County didn’t employ anyone small enough for you to borrow one.” Some of the neighboring counties had female deputies, but there were never any in King County in all his years here. 

He empties the cabinet’s contents into the gear bag and she follows him through as he raids various coworker’s drawers for their snack stashes. He saves his own for last, ignoring Rick’s completely.

Sophia plops down in his chair, grinning as he pulls open a drawer. The big plastic jar of peanut butter pretzels are probably pushing stale by now, but he hadn’t even opened the damn thing.

“Did you always want to be a deputy?” Sophia asks. She’s playing with the Eagle mug on his desk. “You went to college, right?”

“Yeah, I went to college. Football scholarship.” Another example of where he followed Rick, although being first string at a smaller college was probably better than hoping to work up to first string on the other offers he had. “Majored in communication.”

Considering the complete lack of skill he showed in that particular field at the Greene farm, he thinks it’s a good thing he didn’t pay for his tuition.

“Doesn’t sound like a cop degree. Isn’t that usually criminal justice or whatever?”

“Usually, yeah. Not all cops even bother with college.” Out of the entire deputy staff, only one other deputy had a college degree here. Some of the higher ups had them, part of the reason he always figured Rick was being groomed for more, eventually.

Sophia eyes the desk that’s unmistakably Rick’s. Cards and small gifts are still on the surface, waiting for a man to wake from a coma that didn’t come until after the givers were dead or gone. “What about Mister Grimes?”

“He majored in history. He was gonna get his teaching degree, but then he and Lori got married. Decided he wanted a job to support his family and applied here.” 

Shane followed him home like a faithful puppy, despite planning all his life to escape King County and all the connotations of being Sybil Walsh’s bastard son. Rick needed him, terrified of his unplanned, impending fatherhood at twenty-two. He couldn’t imagine letting his brother face all that alone.

In retrospect, he suspects that everyone might have been better off if he took that degree and headed out of Georgia, after all.

Sophia mulls that over and hands him the coffee mug. He wraps it in a spare T-shirt from his drawer and drops it in the bag. There’s not a lot else that he really wants from the desk or that’s useful for them, so he zips the bag.

“Let’s go find your library, kiddo.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The Bug is stuffed to overflowing by the time Shane noses it to a stop near the Grimes’ house. They cleared out several boxes of books at the library, almost all non-fiction. It seems Sophia’s agile brain is planning ahead beyond basic needs from the selection she crams into those boxes. He didn’t even realize the library had that many books geared toward surviving the life they’re living now.

The rest of the haul is now-full gas cans liberated from the hardware store along with other necessities from there, as well as half the back seat stuffed with smaller useful items from the garden center. Both locations will merit a trip with the truck and trailer on another day.

The hardware store shows signs of recent access, which is why they’re back in Rick’s neighborhood. Shane’s hoping it’s the man who helped Rick and his son that have been inside the hardware store, because the dusty tracks are certainly made by a pair. Could be a man and woman, but he’s hoping for a man and young teen boy.

He does a walk through of Rick’s house, one more time, but nothing seems out of place from their last visit, and all of Sophia’s notes are still present. She’s in the backyard, eyeing Carl’s old swing set with a wistful expression. He’s debating another note on the fridge when Sophia shouts in alarm.

“Hey, kid, you gotta shoot it!”

By the time he makes it out the back, Sophia’s pounding across the yard into the neighboring backyard. She shouts again for the boy to shoot the walker, drawing the decaying woman’s attention on herself. The kid’s gun falters and drops back to his side just as Sophia swings Carl’s old aluminum baseball bat. It connects with a thud and the woman drops like a rock.

Shane reaches Sophia just as the kid drops the gun he’s holding, hands trembling as he begins to sob uncontrollably. A glance at the woman on the ground tells him that more likely than not, this is the kid’s mother.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Sophia coaxes, as if the boy were years younger and not as tall as she is and likely the same age.

“Mama.” The sheer grief in the boy’s voice breaks Shane’s heart and he puts the Glock away.

Pounding footsteps and a cry of “Duane!” alert him that the boy’s not alone. The man that appears seems torn between aiming his gun at strangers near the kid and comforting him. Shane just raises his hands to show he’s holstered his gun. Sophia edges backward to him at his soft call of her nickname.

“I’d appreciate it if you lower that gun, mister, especially with my kid right here too,” Shane intones calmly, same as he would with an armed and emotional suspect before.

Sophia’s beside him now, responding to the signal they practiced. While he thinks this man and boy are the ones who helped Rick, he isn’t sure. She hugs him and uses it as cover to pick his pocket for the car keys. Shane maneuvers her behind him when the gun doesn’t lower right away.

“Who are you?” Grief laces the man’s voice, his attention between the woman on the ground and the kid clinging to him.

“Shane Walsh. Former deputy for King County.”

The man blinks away tears. “That name’s familiar.”

“Should be. You helped my partner out a few months back when he woke up from a coma.”

The gun wavers a little, even as Shane feels Sophia stepping slowly away, using his bulk as cover. He’s never been more grateful she’s so damned small compared to him.

“What’s his wife and kid’s names?”

“Lori and Carl. Carl’s about your boy’s age. He took you to the sheriff’s department for showers and guns. Left you a radio.”

“He find them?”

“Yeah, outside Atlanta. Our group got separated. We were hoping they might come back here.”

“He didn’t mention you having a kid too.”

Shane knows in reality, even with the dyed hair, passing Sophia off as his child by blood isn’t likely to be believed. “Fee was part of our group. My kid now.”

Let the man settle that how he likes in his head. 

Surprisingly, the gun’s lowered at last and the man starts laughing. “Smart kid. He’s already to the porch and never gave me a good look at him.”

Shane doesn’t turn and look, not with the gun still in the man’s hand, lowered or not. He trusts that Sophia really is aiming for the car until told otherwise. She’s not the best driver in the Bug yet, but she’s capable enough.

“Not everyone we’ve encountered was friendly. Big group over near Senoia likes to prey on youngsters.”

That gets the man’s attention. Pedophiles always do for fathers. 

He holsters his gun and offers a hand to Shane, who shakes it briefly. “Morgan Jones. My boy’s Duane.” He looks to the woman on the ground. “And that was my Jenny.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Shane says. He can’t imagine the boy trying to work up the courage to put his own mother down. 

Morgan sighs, eyeing the discarded baseball bat near his late wife. “I should have done it. Did you put her down?”

Shane shakes his head. “Fee beat me to her. Was closer.”

“Lord have mercy on me. Another child doing what I could not.” Morgan kneels and closes Jenny’s eyes. “Are you staying in the Grimes’ house?”

“No. Too exposed here in town. We’re out on the water. Just checking in periodically to see if Rick’s turned up.” 

That’s generic enough to not pinpoint anything until he’s more certain of the man, between three rivers and Lake Jackson in the vicinity. Rick’s bad guy radar isn’t exactly the best Shane’s ever seen and months have passed since Rick saw Morgan.

“Smarter than us staying in the middle of everything, I suppose.”

“If you want, I can help you bury her.” He knows he wouldn’t want to leave one of his loved ones exposed to the elements, turned or not. The Bug’s engine starts up and Shane chuckles. “Although I might be walking home at this rate.”

“If you hurry, you might catch up.”

Shane takes that as a signal and sets off at an angle designed to have him reach the cross street Sophia’s likely to turn on. He makes it barely in time, thanks to her inexperience in driving, and she slows to a halt to let him climb in.

“Go round the block to them. Pretty sure they’re friendly.”

“The ones that helped Mister Grimes?”

“Yeah. Offered to help him bury his wife.”

“Alright.” She puts the Bug back in gear and trundles the car over to the driveway he knows belongs to the backyard in question. 

“You can stay in the car if you want.”

She shakes her head and shuts off the engine, climbing out when he does. Morgan already has a shovel out of the garage, beginning the dig next to a pretty azalea bush in the backyard.

“I’ll go get something to bury her in,” Sophia says softly. She jogs off to Rick’s house, returning with a floral flat sheet. Since Morgan waved off his offer to help dig, Shane helps Sophia lift Jenny onto the sheet. He watches with Duane as the girl wraps the sheet neatly, tying it around the body with twine from one of her cargo pockets.

“Twine isn’t as nice as ribbon,” she explains softly to the boy. “But since we can’t put her in a pretty dress, we can do this, at least.”

She doesn’t cover Jenny’s face, and by some grace, most of the damage caused when Sophia put her down is hidden by hair. Only the dark walker blood seeping into the sheet gives away the injury.

Morgan’s grave ends up a lot more shallow than a grave normally would be. But scavengers don’t really feed off walkers, so Shane doesn’t think Jenny will be disturbed. Morgan lifts her into his arms, carefully laying her in the earth. 

In the face of the man and boy’s grief, Shane wishes he knew what to say about a woman he never knew. Dark memories of trying to speak over Otis’s empty grave try to claw their way up, but he forces them down. This is not the time nor the place for his unquestionable guilt.

When neither Morgan nor Duane seem able to speak, Sophia’s small hand slips into Shane’s as she begins to sing softly. It’s not a hymn, at least not one that Shane recognizes, but the words seem fitting enough for a funeral. Morgan gathers Duane close, the father and son swaying as Sophia sings, voice sweet and pure.

The silence when she reaches the end of the song is enough to make goosebumps rise along his arms. He pulls her into his arms, kissing the top of her head as she hugs him tightly.

“Thank you.” Morgan’s voice is thick with emotion. “For the song, and for what you did for my boy and my wife.”

Sophia just nods, burying her face into Shane’s chest. He gives her a moment before nudging her.

“I’ll finish here, if you want. You take the kids over to sit on Rick’s back steps.”

Whatever energy fueled Morgan Jones to dig his wife’s grave, it’s gone now. The man nods and leads his son off to sit on the steps.

By the time he’s done laying Jenny to rest, Sophia’s sitting in one of the long-abandoned swings on the old swing set, legs swinging as she moves slowly back and forth. She’s watching the father and son huddled together even as Shane approaches.

“We can’t leave them here in town,” she says.

“They might not want to leave here.” He’s still not sure where they’re even holed up.

“I would, if I were them. It’s not so far away they can’t visit her. You know she’s why they’re still here.”

Shane imagines so. Trapped by the hellish choice of ending the unlife of a beloved wife and mother, but unwilling to abandon her to roam endlessly either, the Jones family has some closure now, at least.

“Guess we best go ask then, kiddo. Might need your charming ways.”

She rolls her eyes at him, but smiles and abandons the swing. He watches as they show as little resistance to her cajoling as he himself manages.

Within two hours, their duo has become a quartet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song Sophia sings is "Going Home". There are different versions on YouTube, but my imagination uses the one by the Libera boys' choir to have the effect her youthful voice would have.
> 
> For those unfamiliar with Southern Bible Belt culture, this version of Shane being born in the mid-70s with no verifiable father to an unmarried mother would not have been a pleasant upbringing in a rural area like King County.


	14. Reinforcement

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shane and Morgan work on making their home more self-sustaining while still taking each other's measure.

**September 15, 2010**

Having Morgan Jones around proves far more useful than just having another adult on the property. Shane is grateful the man's a tradesman, better skilled than he is by doing such work for a living instead of learning as he goes for home repair like Shane did.

Case in point is the fact that they are sweating their ass off installing a six-foot by ten-foot steel storm shelter underground near the fence at the road. 

Shane never considered an in-ground shelter because of the water table on the property. Morgan studied the various paperwork from the property purchase and the later replacement of the ancient septic system. He even went so far as to perform his own perc tests in multiple spots, an activity that fascinated both Duane and Sophia.

"If I realized I was going to sweat my balls off putting one of these in, I think I would have paid for installation years ago," he says, waiting as Morgan mixes a new batch of concrete in the tow-behind mixer.

Morgan laughs. "Probably would have cost you eight grand or more back then. And just think, we're installing two."

Because they're doubling as root cellars, really their primary purpose, two seemed reasonable enough when Morgan mentioned seeing two of these steel bastards among construction equipment for a new subdivision one county to the south.

"Don't remind me." Shane finishes off his water bottle. Despite the official start date for fall being right around the corner, Georgia weather rarely gets that memo. Feels more like July or August today.

But they're collecting more than can be stored in the house, even allowing for converting both of the unused bedrooms. Storing scavenged canned food outdoors in sheds just reduces its shelf life due to temperature extremes. The steel storm shelter will avoid the leak potential of a concrete one, but it still has to be weighed down so it doesn't float right out of the ground if the water table rises.

They've got the thing anchored and insulated. Now they're making it heavy as hell. The second unit is sitting in a neighboring yard, waiting on them to survive installing this one.

Laughter from the kids up on the deck draws both men's attention. The kids are installing an irrigation system in the raised beds from one of Sophia's purloined library books.

"How long do you think it is going to take before Duane figures out Fee is a girl?" Shane asks.

That gains him an amused look from Morgan. "Considering it took me four days and a slip on her part, it could take a while. Children are notorious for not looking below the surface."

Sophia volunteered her bedroom for the father and son pair, setting up a camp cot at the foot of Shane's bed. Thinking the two are good people didn't make either of them feel comfortable being separated with strangers in the house. Finishing this project will give them more bedroom space again, even if they have to retrieve a bed from somewhere for Sophia.

"Can't say I object to him being confused." Duane's younger than Sophia by eighteen months, younger than Shane's initial estimate. But he was an eleven-year-old boy once, and lack of 'teen' attached to age doesn't mean lack of interest.

"She is a skilled mimic. If you didn't tell me otherwise, I would never guess you've been her guardian for such a short time." Morgan pauses in his work to finish off his own water bottle.

"Fee's a smart girl. But the mimicry, that's from being raised up around an absolute bastard. She's hardwired to adapt fast."

"You never mentioned what happened to her parents."

Shane flinches, just a little. Ed deserved the beating he gave him, and more, but there's no doubt he died due to being separated from the rest of camp during the attack due to his injuries 

"Her daddy died when our camp got swarmed. I pulled him off her mama earlier that day and finally beat the fear of me into him like I should've done earlier. Walkers got him while he was sulking in his tent instead of coming to supper."

"Can't say I blame you for beating his ass. Been many a time I wanted to do the same. How did her mama react?"

"Like most women stuck in that situation. Cried for me to stop. Tended to him after." 

It's a frustrating cycle Shane witnessed far too many times as a deputy. Women who don't believe they'll be safe if they leave, so they placate the abuser. Damned restraining orders are no better than toilet paper most times.

Only ones Shane's witnessed escape and make it stick seem to be the ones with family far away, or when the asshole's criminal in other ways that gets him sent off for a long stint in prison. 

"Her mama's still living?"

"Was last I saw her, middle of August. Timid little woman, barely willing to speak her mind even with her husband dead and daughter missing. Hopefully she's still with the rest of the group and not separated off."

While he still doubts Rick could keep the whole group alive, and he'd be spread too thin to protect Carol as well as his own family, Shane meant it when he told Sophia that if Carol's with Daryl Dixon, she's probably alive.

"Missing?"

Morgan's puzzled look reminds Shane just how sparing they've been with information on how they got lost from the main group. He's not yet ready to tell then man his own story, but Sophia's is badass. He relays the tale with a grin, including his own recovery due to her nursing.

"Damn. I can't imagine Duane on his own for that long. I understand more about why you were willing to recruit us now."

"You didn't have to save Rick. Figured that got you halfway toward being a backup guardian for Fee if anything happened to me."

"And the other half?"

"Watched you with your boy. You know the realities we live in now and don't overprotect him. You didn't object to her weapons."

"Sounds like there's a story behind that."

Concrete mix ready, the men return to work pouring it before it sets. It gives Shane a breather to figure out how to answer that.

"Rick's wife didn't want Carl having any survival training that was more serious than Cub Scout level. Especially dangerous because the boy's the wandering, overly curious type. If he were the kid wandering the woods? I doubt I would have found him alive because he's been too protected from the realities of the world, before and after the dead rose."

"Rick never would have left him alone and told him to run."

Shane freezes at the matter-of-fact statement, looking over at Morgan. 

The older man simply shrugs. "You know your own kid's strengths and weaknesses. I don't think I can even comprehend why he left the girl when no one knew she had any survival skills either."

It's one of the things that plague Shane, now that he's separate from the situation and more objective. He never would have trusted Sophia to run to safety, not back then. Why did Rick?

"I got no answer for that, man, and I've known the man since kindergarten." 

It's a friendship that started when an older kid pushed Rick off the swings. Rick shared his bigger box of crayons with Shane earlier that day, so Shane owed him. Shane got a paddling for punching the second grader, but he didn't care because it also got him a best friend.

"Less time to adjust to this world, I suppose. He did not witness it fall like we did. Doesn't understand how far a man needs to go to keep his family safe." Morgan's guilt over Sophia putting Jenny down has not yet abated.

Morgan's likely right on that. By the time Rick lost Sophia, he had less than two weeks awake in this new world. Shane can barely remember the first two weeks that the world spent falling, too blurred with fear and grief over Rick's coma.

"Could explain it." Shane hopes his continued absence from King County is due to searching for Sophia. He doesn't want his prediction that Rick will get his family killed to come true.

Morgan tips the mixer back upright and assesses their progress. "One more, I think, and then we let it cure before we bury it."

Shane checks his watch. It's not the really good model he wore before, but it does its job. "Have to start on the other one tomorrow."

"We could take a break. Neither the shelter nor the excavator will go anywhere."

"Fee has been wanting to search out the farms around."

With the fences here reinforced and enhanced with Morgan adding electric wire charged by solar like the gate, Shane thinks they could probably risk more chickens, at least. On their most recent trip to gather off Gloria's gardens, some of her chickens reappeared. 

Now the coop's been relocated here, along with four hens, eleven half-grown chicks, and a rooster with a pissy enough attitude to make the cat look sweet. If any of those chicks turn out to be roosters, Shane's making the asshole into chicken and dumplings. They get enough eggs off the three hens that aren't sitting a nest to expand their diet every few days.

"That's something we should do sooner rather than later. If the herds do move out of the cities, smaller farm animals might not survive those numbers."

Considering Shane's seen what can happen if they get a cow down due to injury, he agrees with Morgan. His property couldn't support a cow, not enough grazing, but chickens or a goat or two, maybe.

"I can think of a few places we should check. Small farms. Even an animal rescue next county over that had some livestock among the exotics."

"Exotics could be dangerous, if they get loose or were turned loose."

There's a thought Shane could do without. Place had tigers, among other big predators. He can't see walkers doing much damage to those.

"Don't think I could bring myself to shoot any of them, if they've survived this long."

"Me either. We will have to hope for the best."

With the last batch of concrete poured and settled, Shane steps down into the darkened interior of the shelter and drops a digital thermometer inside. They'll observe it over the next two weeks to see if Morgan's predictions hold true that it should drip into the sixties inside once the earth is back in place.

The kids can chart it. It'll be a good science lesson to add to what Morgan already explained about why root cellars were buried back in the days before refrigerators and climate control.

"We should also harvest what gardens we find along the way," Morgan suggests as they head for the house. "Between the four of us, surely we can figure out that canning monster Fee brought home."

Shane agrees with a laugh, because between Gloria's house and the library, they do have a wealth of learning material. The pressure canner is one of the biggest Shane's ever seen, nothing like the little stock pot his Grandma Jean used for making jellies.

"Your crops are coming in nicely, Fee," Morgan calls out.

They really are. If the weather holds to the usual pattern of decent warmth through October, they'll harvest plenty of field peas, turnips, and winter squash.

Sophia grins and waves, going back to whatever soil test the kids are doing.

"How opposed would you be to your back deck becoming a greenhouse?" Morgan muses. He's glancing between the railing and the house, with that same calculating look he wore planning the underground storage.

"Other than needing the airflow when it's hot, none at all." The nights are more pleasant now, the only real sign of September.

"Between you and me, I'm sure we can rig it to keep airflow during the hot months. The plants won't need to be sealed inside then, just the winter."

Shane thinks of how structures like chicken houses and greenhouses at garden centers all seem to have sides that can be raised and lowered and nods. "Fee will love the idea. Didn't want to risk tomatoes and peppers with colder weather being unpredictable."

"We'll check out that garden center first. Might as well see if their greenhouses can be repurposed before reinventing the wheel."

Morgan reaches out to snag a fig off one of the four potted trees that inhabit the side deck. The dwarf trees are in whiskey barrel style pots and usually roll inside down to the workout room during the winter. They may not have that kind of space this year.

The fruit trees that were still struggling along at the garden center are planted, some here and others on neighboring properties. They might not see fruit off those next year, but Shane finds the idea of planning for a fruit crop they might not see for two or three years comforting.

"How did you end up with these?" Morgan asks. "Not too often single men with a busy job bother with potted plants. These have been here a while, not like Fee's houseplant collection."

"Housewarming gift." He's still a little baffled why Lori talked Rick into the first potted fig tree. She can't have believed he would keep the damn thing alive. But he liked it enough after it survived the first year to buy it a few friends.

"Ah. A woman's idea, I imagine?"

Shane just nods, not wanting to think of Lori even in the sense of the time when she was nothing more than his best friend's wife who invited him for Sunday dinner on the regular as payment for keeping Rick from accidentally destroying their house in the guise of home repairs.

The fact that his house now has over two dozen houseplants of all shapes and sizes is the better sort of memory. Once she was assured he meant it that not all her gathering needed to be useful, Sophia rescues every surviving potted plant she sees. 

Nursing those plants back to health brings her joy. He'll live in a goddamned jungle to make her smile.

Morgan snags a few more figs. "My dearly departed mama had a recipe for a fig cake that would make you sell your soul for another piece. Wonder if we could find its twin in any of those cookbooks?"

Shane snorts, accepting the two figs passed his way. "Tell Fee you're craving it and she'll run it down."

"Hey, Shane! Go check the crockpot." From the far end of the deck, Sophia holds up grubby hands as proof she's still busy while he's not.

"I'll make sure our supper's viable if you want first shower," he offers to Morgan.

The other man accepts easily. He and Duane are still reveling in the idea of clean, running water after months without. He heads down the hall, while Shane washes his hands and lifts the lid to the big pot.

The red kidney beans are definitely at the perfect stage, seasoned with salvaged vegetables, spices, and a precious half pound of sausage from the freezer. Eventually, they've got to figure out how to make sausage from wild game. Shane always gave the bits best for sausage to Gloria in exchange for getting half back after she worked her magic.

If Morgan thinks he can rig a smokehouse, maybe Shane can hunt a feral pig for the freezers. Bacon won't be the same as farm raised, not enough fat, but bacon is bacon.

He starts the rice cooker borrowed from a neighbor's collection of dusty kitchen gadgets. They'll eat well tonight, with leftovers for tomorrow or the freezer.

By the time the kids come inside and wash up and Morgan returns from his shower, Shane's got the table set except for drinks. The food ladled into the bowls smells heavenly.

Lucius bitches for his own serving of rice. "Cat, you're supposed to be a carnivore," Shane grumbles, even as he tips a spoonful of rice into the cat's bowl on top of his kibble.

The tom cat ignores him, picking delicately in the bowl for the begged portion and leaving the actual cat food. At least it's not just Shane that Lucius dislikes. The cat's as likely to take a swipe at the other two males as him. Sophia's his only person, although he sleeps on the foot of Shane's bed in a fashion that makes Shane think he's guarding the girl while she sleeps.

Arguing with the cat gets him laughed at by both kids, but he doesn't mind. Morgan just shakes his head as the other man sets glasses of iced tea on the table at each place.

When Duane offers grace, Shane no longer hesitates to link his hands with the children on either side. One day soon, he's got to tell Morgan all he's done, but for now, he's just glad not to be alone in knowing the harsh realities of keeping children safe in their world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Morgan begins his magic of attack proofing with a lot less crazy, this time around. He is nowhere near done, I promise. ;)
> 
> With the weekly time jumps, some progress will happen in the background (like finding the chickens and clearing the garden center), but I figure y'all won't mind too much.
> 
> The concern about the water table is a big one with underground structures like basements and shelters. Five houses we looked at when we bought our place had flooded storm shelters... Not good! 
> 
> In general, canned goods (both home and store bought) should be kept below 70 degrees for maximum shelf life and in the dark as well. They can last years beyond the Best By dates in the right conditions.


	15. Unexpected Sympathy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A stressful confrontation leads Shane to finally confess all his sins in front of Morgan.

** September 22, 2010 **

Ten days.

That's how long it takes eleven-year-old Duane Jones to finally realize his new best friend is a girl.

The four days since his revelation are filled with a mood shifting between awe toward Sophia's ability to mimic Shane so well she fooled him and disgruntlement at the two adult males’ amused looks.

"Think he'll value those observation lessons more now," Morgan remarks to Shane as they butcher the deer Shane and Sophia took down this morning. "But I'm proud he's not really treating her differently now that he knows."

"He's a good kid. Knows the value of friendship."

Morgan hums a sound that seems like agreement as he neatly wraps the rump roast Shane passes him in white butcher paper and labels it. 

Next to where he's working, a bloody cooler of all the parts going for sausage is growing full. Shane's curious to see how the supplies they located at a local game processor's home and business will turn out sausage for them. They don't want to waste a scrap of meat nowadays.

That's why the kids are up at the house using the outdoor sink Morgan installed yesterday, cleaning the intestines saved in a bucket during the field dressing. They don't seem especially grossed out as they follow the directions in the book from the processor. Instead, they're chatting happily even as they take turns scraping the intestines they flushed.

They have an audience, too. With the chickens turned loose during the day to roam the property in search of bugs and other snacks, three of the now seven adult hens are watching avidly. The little Polish hens are joined in their viewership by the nanny goat rescued from the same farm as the new chickens, along with the two lambs the goat is raising.

Hell, Shane only knows the damn fuzzballs are lambs and not baby goats because the farm kept records. They look more goat than sheep to him. Where the rest of the goats and sheep the farm raised are, they haven't found yet. A storm put a tree down on a paddock fence and freed most of farm's inhabitants.

"You ever eaten the organ meat before?" Morgan asks, nodding toward the other cooler he brought back that contains the organs he saved.

"Heart, yeah. Most folks won't bother with the liver or kidneys that I've seen, but can't hurt to try. Lungs are for the demon cat. I don't think we're going to run that hungry here for people food."

Morgan laughs, taking the next cut of meat to wrap. "How long til even she starts calling that cat Lucifer, too?"

"Popular opinion of his nature will win out in the end."

Best thing about the goat is they finally found a match for the cat. For some reason, Lucius decided he could stalk one of the lambs. It was unexpected, because the cat's routinely ignored the chickens that should trigger prey instinct.

The sight of the cat being chased in pissing, yowling terror by the normally sweet nanny goat Sophia calls Princess Buttercup is going to be one of Shane's funniest memories until the end of days.

Everyone goes on alert when they hear the sound of a vehicle out on the road. Shane and Morgan both rinse their hands quickly, and the kids disappear so fast it's like they teleported.

Shane reaches for his rifle even as the sound of the engine slows. It's definitely coming here, but he can't blindly trust that it's Rick.

Morgan picks up his own rifle. They can't quite see up the driveway from here, but it also means they can't be seen.

"How about I stay out of sight until it's confirmed friendly?" the other man suggests. "Someone coming here that knows you might shoot first if they see someone they don't know."

Shane agrees. Rick would be the only person who might recognize Morgan, and that's not a guarantee.

He's still cautious as he heads toward the driveway, keeping to cover as much as possible. He doesn't recognize the SUV at the gate, but that doesn't mean anything. He didn't exactly return home in what he left here in.

The driver seems to be studying a paper held up in front of the steering wheel next to a map. Their face is hidden, sitting too far back for Shane to see clearly without stepping fully into view. But if they have a map, he doesn't think it's anyone he knows.

The driver opens the door and steps out. Big, male, face obscured by the shadows thrown by a ballcap and the SUV door. Shane can tell the moment the visitor spots the electric wire on the fence, because he laughs.

The sound triggers a memory, but it's vague and he can't quite grasp it.

But when the man steps closer to the keypad for the gate to press the intercom button, Shane no longer needs to hear the voice to identify their visitor.

"You don't have to buzz the whole damn house down, Merle," he calls out.

Typical for Merle Dixon, the man smirks and presses the button one more time. 

"Well, well, well. If it ain't Deputy Dawg, alive and kicking," he drawls.

Shane represses the urge to call the man he still considers a consummate douchebag exactly that. "Guess this means your brother's faith you could survive any damn thing wasn't misplaced."

Daryl's judgement of people's ability to survive is steadily getting reinforced in Shane's mind. He hopes the man is still with Rick.

The big man looks healthy enough, although his missing right hand is replaced with a leather covering of some sort. Shane sees the flash of a blade there as well.

"Where is my little baby brother? Didn't come all the way here to stare at a piggie's face."

"I have no idea. Group got separated over a month ago by a herd overrunning a farm we were staying on. Thought the same as you did that they might end up back here."

"Seems Officer Friendly still ain't grasped logical thinking, you think?"

As much as that seems to be the truth, Shane can't bring himself to agree. The damned goat chooses that moment to wander up, butting at his right hand.

For some reason, her appearance sets Merle off. His gun is drawn and aimed at Shane in a split second. "You don't strike me as the farm boy type. You lying to me about my brother? That pissant dickhead got him killed, didn't he?"

Shane doesn't go for his Glock. He's pretty sure Merle will shoot him if he does. He also knows Morgan's probably sighting the man right now.

But it isn't the other adult who speaks, and Shane nearly pisses himself when he realizes Sophia's voice is coming from _outside the fucking fence_. She must have accessed the escape tunnel under the fence Morgan convinced him was a good idea.

"Best lower your weapon and stop jumping to stupid conclusions, Mister Dixon. I don't want to, but I _will_ shoot you."

Shane can see the wheels turning as Merle tries to place the voice and whether or not to take it seriously.

"You saying Daryl ain't here, kid?" His gun never waivers.

"I'm saying that. I'm also saying you ain't the only one Rick Grimes left behind to die, so put that gun up. Pretty sure shooting you in the ass won't kill you, but it ain't a trip to Disneyland either."

Something finally clicks for Merle and he lowers the gun, guffawing. "Damn, Mouseling, you grew teeth."

He holsters the gun, turning toward the direction Sophia's speaking from. He even makes a show of raising his hand and stump. 

Sophia moves forward, holstering her own gun, but lifting the taser. "Don't figure I gotta explain this to you, do I? Anyone else with you?"

"Woman and her boy. Little fella is barely out of diapers. She patched me up after Atlanta."

Shane isn't exactly sure he likes Merle speaking to Sophia, but the antagonistic stance the man adopted toward Shane disappears entirely as he speaks to the girl. He remembers vaguely, back at the quarry, that the kids never seemed to fear the asshole redneck.

"Guess you'll understand if we ask for proof of that."

The SUV is still running. When Merle makes a motion with his fingers, the rear passenger window rolls down. Whatever Sophia sees makes her smile and waggle her fingers at the car.

He's proud that she inspects the interior as best she can before nodding. Some things he's taught her. Others are either instinct, learned from what accuracies television managed, or a combination of the two.

"He's telling the truth, Shane. Woman and toddler. Even got a carseat for him back there."

The kid's the deciding factor. Even if it's just a visit before they move on with an active search, they need to share information. Maybe let the kid have a safe place to play for a bit.

"Let's bring them inside. Have a conversation without assumptions bringing weapons into the mix."

Sophia doesn't holster the taser as she circles the SUV to the keypad. "Tahoe's not going to drive itself, Mister Dixon."

Merle laughs, the sound carrying across the property. "You sure ain't the mouseling I remember. Damn little spitfire now."

He climbs into the driver's seat even as Sophia enters the code and the gate slides open. Sophia waits on the Tahoe to clear before slipping inside just as the gate closes.

Sophia throws her arms around Shane as soon as she reaches him. For all her bravery displayed just now, he can tell having a gun pointed at him has rocked her.

He hugs her tightly even as Merle steps back out of the truck. The redneck eyes them with a calculated look that tells him the man's actually sober. He hopes it's a good sign and not a temporary reprieve.

As a tall woman with elaborate braids emerges and retrieves a fluffy haired toddler, Shane is definitely surprised. After the violent, racism fueled attack on T-Dog the others described, Merle reappearing with a statuesque black woman is a definite surprise.

"This here is Michonne and Andre. 'Chonne, these two are the original deputy from the quarry camp and one of the stray kids. Sophia."

The toddler is squirming and babbling, reaching for the goat that nearly got Shane shot.

"Shane Walsh, ma'am." He offers a hand and she shifts the boy to her other hip to take it.

"You aren't the man who left Merle handcuffed to a roof, correct?"

From the look in her eyes, he's glad he isn't Rick. "No, that would be my former partner."

"He's real good at stupid shit like that," Sophia grumbles. "We gotta start a support group at the rate he's going."

Shane can't really chide her for it. He and Merle contributed to their situations. She did not.

"Sorry. Sophia's still pissed off about surviving fifteen days alone in the woods after Rick lost her when walkers were chasing them."

Michonne smiles kindly at the girl. "I would be plenty pissed off myself in that case."

"Don't want to startle you folks, but there's four of us here. Morgan? Duane? They're friendlies."

The older man steps into view from the other side of the GMC. His rifle is slung against his back. "I'll take your word for it since the man did put away his gun."

"The baby can play with the goat, ma'am. She won't hurt him," Duane calls down from the deck. He trots down the stairs, unlatching the gate Shane installed to keep the livestock off the deck and out of Sophia's garden.

"Duane? Did you kids shut off the water?" Morgan asks.

The boy squirms. "Maybe?"

But he darts off in a manner that says probably not.

Morgan offers a hand to first Michonne and then Merle. "Morgan Jones. My boy's Duane. We got stalled out here on the way to the Atlanta refugee camp when my wife died."

"Be glad you didn't make it. Camps were a nightmare. Fell to the walkers long before the napalm." 

Michonne looks haunted. Shane wonders who she lost.

"So I hear from Shane."

Sophia finally releases Shane with a gentle pat to the wound no longer bandaged under his shirt. "Does Andre want a snack? Something to drink?"

"He would certainly appreciate it," his mother replies.

Sophia opens the gate for the woman and child to go upstairs. "Getting awful hot with the deer only half butchered."

"Hint taken," Morgan replies, amused. "Suppose you come help us while Sophia spoils that baby, Mister Dixon."

Merle stops looking upward and nods. "Good setup here, Walsh. Better than that dollhouse in town."

Seems Merle found Rick's place first. As they go back down to the deer hung near the water's edge, Shane can see Duane's gone back to the task of preparing the intestines for sausage casings.

"How did you find us out here?"

"Phone book."

Shane laughs, startled at the old school method of search. "Makes sense, except I'm not listed. You must've found me in something at Rick's."

"His skinny ass wife's Christmas card list. Figured we came this far on a hunch. Kept following it."

Merle doesn't offer to help as Shane and Morgan return to butchering. Instead he watches quietly for about five minutes.

"You think my brother actually stayed with your partner?"

Shane nods. "It's likely. There at the end, Rick certainly wanted him around more than me."

"He found out you were fucking his wife, then?"

Shane can't stop the flinch those unvarnished words causes. That may explain the truthful reply. "I think he was more pissed that I got her pregnant."

Morgan makes a startled aound, reminding Shane they haven't had the in-depth conversation he knows is necessary.

"Holy shit, boy, you got a talent for understatement there. Surprised the man left you living." Merle looks a little impressed, which makes Shane even more ashamed.

Shane very carefully hands off the meat he's just cut free to Morgan. His hands are shaking and Morgan's sharp eyes catch it.

"He's the reason you were nursing a wound when we first got here, isn't he? You still favor that left side."

"It's why Sophia and I couldn't keep looking for them. I was sick. Couldn't keep her safe."

"So you brought her home to the safest place you knew. Wounded animal back to its den."

Merle reaches out to lift Shane's shirt and he doesn't dodge it. Both men get a good look at the ugly mess the knife, infection, and debridement made of his chest.

"Took pieces of you, too," Merle says softly, almost kindly, before letting the cloth drop.

"I deserved it." 

At Merle's scoffing snort, he shakes his head. Shane can't stop the confession once it starts. Words tumble out, baring his soul to one man he's started to call friend and another he fears may understand him too well to hide a damn thing.

He doesn't leave anything out. Aiming the gun at Rick in the woods. Almost forcing himself on Lori at the CDC. Killing Otis. Threatening Dale. His attempts to get Lori to leave. Snapping Randall's filthy, rapist neck. Aiming a gun at his brother in that dark field.

When he finally runs out of words, Morgan looks shocked, but thoughtful. Merle just looks like the confession settles something in his mind. 

"Why don't you take a seat, Walsh? We can finish this up." Merle steps past him to retrieve the knife Shane set aside as he started talking.

It's the unexpected kindness in the redneck's voice that makes Shane actually comply, stumbling to the stump Sophia perches on when she's watching but not needed.

Morgan and Merle work in silence for a half hour, finishing up the deer. It isn't until Morgan brings a bottle of water over and cleans Shane's hands that he even remembers his hands are still covered it deer blood. The other man is gentle, almost as if he's tending a child and not a grown man.

"Morgan?" He's half lost his voice in the flood of words earlier.

"Pretty sure you're in shock, Shane. That was a hell of a lot of weight to be carrying. How much does Sophia know?"

"About Otis, Randall, and the field with Rick."

"Two of the worst transgressions, and the one saving grace."

Shane shivers despite the heat. "What?"

"You rid the world of a rapist who delighted in the idea of children as prey. Anyone critical of that will meet my own fists." Morgan offers him the remainder of the water bottle and Shane drinks.

"Girl knows you're a killer and dangerous. Trusts you to keep her safe. Kid like her? She wouldn't still be here if you were the monster you think you are."

Shane nearly gives himself whiplash to look up at Merle. The man shrugs before continuing. "You ever see her run to her daddy to check him over or for comfort?"

"No. Not once."

"You don't grow up in that kind of hell and not develop a radar for people like him. Bet she would have been as ready to get rid of that Randall as you and my brother were, if she'd met him."

"Little that you've done is truly unforgivable, Shane, so long as you acknowledge the parts where you lost sight of the line between right and wrong," Morgan says. 

He offers a hand out to help Shane stand. "Let's get this deer put away. Take the afternoon to get to know our newcomers."

What he thought would condemn him instead brought him sympathy in both men's eyes. He doesn't believe he deserves it, but for now, he's going to trust their judgement over his own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I debated long and hard over what group would save Merle, since I didn't want the Governor involved (not sure Woodbury will exist). Considered Grady and the Vatos both seriously (can you imagine Merle turned loose on the rapist cops?)
> 
> In the end, a Michonne who saves Andre probably wouldn't be wandering far and wide around the Georgia countryside. I liked the poetic justice of him owing his life to Michonne in this. 😁
> 
> And dear lord, poor Sophia needed at least one female around, right?
> 
> As for Andrea's fate without her savior, we shall see... Eventually. 😈


	16. Or Die Trying

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sophia expands her nursing skills and asks for lessons from Merle.

** September 22, 2010 **

Shane is still feeling off balance even inside the house, emotions not settling well. Sophia's playing hostess still, bustling Merle off to a shower once they return. From the fresh clothing, he guesses Michonne and her son experienced similar.

She doesn't say anything, but the half hug she gives him in passing goes a long way toward reminding him of Merle's words about trust. Her casual affection isn't any different toward him than Duane's is toward Morgan or what he's witnessed between Carl and his parents.

Morgan joins Duane at the coffee table, where the boy's working on the latest puzzle the kids are tackling. It's not an activity Shane is especially fond of, but he chips in now and then.

"Is there anything Andre won't eat?" she asks Michonne. The woman's at the table with a cold drink, with Andre coloring next to her 

"He is really not very picky, which has been a benefit in the last few months."

Sophia nods and studies the pantry. Shane knows there's a rabbit in the crockpot along with a barbeque concoction Morgan taught her to make, but it began with four people in mind.

"Do you think it will bother him to eat B-U-N-N-Y? I don't want to mention it and upset him. We can say it's chicken." Sophia's snagging canned goods and sliding them onto the counter next to the stove.

"He should be fine with rabbit. It'll probably be chicken he objects to if he ever gets to play with your flock."

Sophia laughs. "Makes sense."

"Do you need any help?" Shane asks. He thinks something to do might be a good thing right now.

"Might peel some potatoes from that batch we dug last week."

Shane gets off the couch and goes to gather up enough potatoes from the multi tiered potato bin Duane built under Morgan's direction this week. He fetches the bucket they use for kitchen scraps, a colander, and a paring knife. When he returns to the table to sit opposite Michonne, she's smiling.

"Is supper often a group effort?"

"I like to cook. Morgan's got a few choice dishes, and Sophia and Duane are learning as we go." Shane begins peeling the potatoes as he speaks, glancing over to see Sophia's preheating the oven. Since the evenings are cooler now, they're using the oven a little more.

"The bread and biscuits have been a lot of trial and error," Sophia adds. "Baking is too complicated. I don't know how my mama always made it look so easy."

"Lots of practice, I imagine," Michonne says, smiling after she takes a drink of her iced tea. "I never used to have the time or patience for it myself, but now that we can't get bread from the stores, I suppose learning how is a higher priority."

"I can do flatbread, easy. It's anything that needs to rise that's a problem."

"You should ask Merle. He makes pretty good biscuits even one-handed."

Sophia looks intrigued even as she sets out cookie sheets to bake the fries on. "I think I remember him and Daryl having biscuits back at camp now and then."

"They did. Think they took turns baking them in that little cast iron dutch oven they had." He thinks the Dixon brothers probably ate better than the rest of camp with their willingness to forage beyond the few things Shane knew like mushrooms.

"Chonne? You got the med kit handy?" Merle calls out as he comes down the hall. The man's lost weight, Shane thinks, probably due to the amputation. As rough as his own recovery has been, he thinks losing a hand would be harder.

"What do you need?" Michonne asks, going to rummage in a duffle bag.

"Got a blister forming."

"Can I take a look?" Sophia asks.

Shane expects Merle to object, especially since he has a towel draped over the arm that Shane assumes doesn't have the stump cover on. But the man looks at the girl for a moment and then nods, taking a seat on one of the barstools and resting his arm on the countertop.

"Ain't a pretty sight, but Walsh says you took care of an infected wound for him."

Sophia nods, reaching for the towel. He watches as Merle's shoulders stiffen despite his confident words, but the girl's expression remains curious. From his vantage point, he can't see anything really other than the clinical interest in Sophia's expression as she asks Merle to rotate the forearm.

"What are you wearing under the leather?" she asks at last.

"Sock."

"The seam is rubbing on your skin. The knife weight is making it rub, isn't it?"

"Yeah. I know they make special covers, but those aren't in the places we could access."

"Does it sweat a lot?"

"Yeah. Sock is usually pretty damp at the end of the day."

"Do you let it air out?"

"Sometimes."

Sophia's brow furrows in that way Shane knows it does when she's working out a problem in her head. "I'll be right back."

While the girl is gone, Michonne sets the med kit on the counter. She's looking curious as Sophia returns with a collection of items in her arms. She dumps them in front of Merle and fetches the kitchen shears.

"I get the antiperspirant, lotion, and the pantyhose, but you've got me baffled on the lady products," the redneck drawls. He doesn't seem offended.

Sophia taps the textbook she retrieved. "It says keep everything dry on an amputation. But you don't want it too dry, or the skin will crack. How long do you need these?"

Merle taps a spot on his forearm and she rolls the material out beside his arm before cutting. 

"These are tights, so they're more durable than pantyhose and softer than knit socks. Best part is no toe seam." She hands the first 'sock' to Merle, who rubs the material thoughtfully.

"Won't that be hot?"

"Sometimes, but that's what the pantyliners are for. If you put one down in the leather cover, it'll soak up sweat. But you should keep extra socks too, and change them often. Spray your arm with the antiperspirant, obviously."

Sophia's snipped four socks now, sacrificing leggings Shane knows she collects for winter layering. Merle doesn't seem offended by the idea, instead tugging the textbook over and finding the chapter Sophia directs him too.

"We'll need to find more of these tights," Michonne says, inspecting one. "Where did you find them?"

"Boutique kid shop in town. They didn't have a lot in this size, but he might try the next size down, too. The sizes are more a problem for the length and waistband."

"And the moleskin?" Merle asks.

"If you have to use something with a seam, put a strip under where the seam will ride. Mama taught me that when my socks bothered my feet. You can turn socks inside out too."

"Your socks still bother you, Fee?" Shane asks as he starts slicing potatoes he's peeled.

"Not the ones I have now. And my boots and shoes fit better now too."

It takes Shane a minute to really connect the dots of how cheaply dressed the girl always was. He can't imagine Ed spending a lot of money for Sophia's care, so Carol probably had to adapt where she could. He doesn't comment on it.

"You really should let it air when you can, Mister Dixon, especially since you are probably wearing the prosthetic more than you should two months after it happened. If it gets really infected, you'll lose more of it."

Merle sighs deeply. "It's damned ugly."

"Walkers are ugly." Sophia shrugs. "This is just you. But if it bothers you, one of these will at least let the skin breathe."

She picks up one of the improvised stump covers and slides it on gently. The purple fabric is definitely intended for a girl's taste. "There. Pretty."

Sophia flashes Merle an impish grin before stepping around the bar to retrieve the colander of French fries Shane prepared. Michonne looks amused, so Shane can only imagine Merle's expression.

As Sophia gets the fries rinsed, dried, and seasoned for the oven, he returns the scrap bucket to its spot and retrieves the asparagus from the fridge and sets it to steam in the rice cooker. 

Shane checks the cans she chose earlier as he waits on Sophia to load the oven. They don't normally add a third side, but it is the best way to expand the meal other than bread. Oven is occupied.

"Wasn't there a bread machine at the same neighbor house that had the rice cooker?" Shane muses as he opens the cans of hominy.

"I think they had every kitchen gadget ever sold."

"Bet Morgan can figure them out." He's the one who demystified the rice cooker, after all.

"We'll go get them tomorrow."

"How long will you stay?" Shane asks. "I figure you'll want to keep looking for your brother."

Merle's still seated at the bar, but Michonne's back at the table with Andre. He glances over his shoulder and the woman nods.

"If you're willing, Chonne and Andre could use a place to stay. Ain't right to keep the boy on the road, but I wasn't leaving them in the city fringes either."

Shane doesn't really have to look at the other three residents to know their answers, but he gives them the courtesy anyway before answering Merle. 

"They're welcome as long as they want to stay. You should make this your base. I can't always go out with you, and it might not even be advisable, but I can help from time to time. Food, supplies, fuel we have plenty of."

"I can help with the search, if needed," Morgan says. "Duane is safe and happy here with Shane and Sophia, if I needed to be away overnight, right, Duane?"

The boy nods. "Fee's mama is with Mister Dixon's brother, right?"

"Last I knew, yeah," Shane answers.

"I'm okay with you looking. We kinda owe Fee that."

Morgan reaches out to tug his son into a tight hug. Merle and Michonne look puzzled, so Shane steps closer to quietly share that Sophia put down Jenny.

The timers ding and he moves away to help finish supper.

"Duane? Snag the desk chair out of your room."

The boy jogs off to retrieve the chair, and Michonne adjusts the dining chairs to make room for it. With that added, they have enough seating if the older kids sit at the bar. He needs to see about a bigger table with the new additions. Gloria would probably love her table seeing use again.

Shane confesses to being a little surprised when Merle complies with Duane's wish to say grace.

The man catches his side glance, because he smirks just a little. His response is pitched low enough the kids don't hear.

"Might not have lived a godly life, but you didn't touch a crumb on my granny's table without saying grace when I was their age. If the kid needs to say grace, I can bow my head."

Shane just nods, understanding more of the man now. He wonders if it's a side effect of a sober Merle or if kids are a soft spot in any form. Michonne certainly doesn't seem to mind that her young son is seated between her and the redneck.

Michonne disperses some of the intensity after a few bites of dinner. "I didn't know you could find fresh asparagus in the fall without supermarkets."

"The lady whose gardens we've harvested the most from had two asparagus plots. One for spring and one for fall. If you don't harvest in spring, it'll produce in the fall," Sophia explains.

"And since she sold her produce, she kept better records than a casual gardener," Shane adds. "We've been canning and freezing everything we can salvage. That garden and the others we've found."

"Been digging potatoes a little every day. Let them cure in the sun, then take them to the root cellars. We'll probably have enough for the whole winter." Sophia sounds especially proud of that fact.

"Even with extra mouths to feed?" Michonne asks, looking concerned.

"We have been collecting canned goods and dry goods too," Shane reassures her. "The gardens are just extra insurance, just like Sophia's gardens here."

"Everything is about extra insurance," Morgan says. "We still need an alternate to the house heating system."

"You have electricity, but no heat?" Michonne runs a finger down the condensation on her glass, where ice cubes bob in the tea.

"Heat's propane. Winter here may not be like Montana, but the tank won't last the winter."

"Easy enough to refill it. Can teach you two how if you show me the propane company."

Merle shrugs when everyone turns to him. "Worked for a propane company back when I could still have a CDL. Place won't have years worth on hand, but enough for winter, yeah. And swiping tanks off other properties will gain you more."

Morgan pauses with a forkful of barbeque rabbit near his mouth. "Just change out the physical tank. Damn."

"Yeah. You might still put in a backup system. Wood stove would be better than a fireplace for the long term. Even with plenty of propane, the heat unit could fail, and HVAC is not among my checkered work history."

"Mine either," Morgan says, finally remembering the bite and chewing thoughtfully. "Can't be hard to learn, right? If Sophia's figuring how to patch living people together and growing food from books, we could learn other things."

"Community college over at Thomaston. Sophia and I drove by coming back from Columbus."

"Another for the list," Sophia chirrups. "It's getting really long."

"What all is on this list?"

"Rest of the stores in town, the hospital, and finding more of the farms before the animals die or walkers find them." Sophia rattles off ideas with ease.

"And gas before it all goes bad," Duane adds.

"Pushing those limits already," Merle says. "Too much ethanol. Be better to clear military vehicles for the long haul. Damn things will run on just about everything. Use jet fuel overseas postings."

"You were a Marine," Sophia states. "I remember you and your brother talking about it one day."

"Was once. Didn't stick as a career, but I do remember a thing or two."

"Like knives?"

Shane thinks it says a lot about their world that no one flinches from a teenage girl hinting for Marine combat training.

Merle nods. "You want to learn a blade, girl?"

"Yes. I know how with walkers. But that's not the same."

"Alright. Don't suppose it'll hurt to take a few days break. Help clear the hospital and that military checkpoint outside. Start some lessons. Chonne can help there."

"Need a different blade than a katana for her."

Merle laughs at their inquiring looks. "Chonne is deadly with that damned Japanese blade of hers, but she's right. It's heavy for a girl Sophia's size. Know any blade enthusiasts round here, Walsh?"

"Two or three." They've seen no sign of local survivors so far, so gleaning from the more useful homes should take priority. 

"Guess I'm staying put a bit then. Baby brother should be able to keep himself in one piece a while longer."

Michonne looks around the room. "Tomorrow, you boys go figure out what it'll take to clear that hospital. I'll start the kids on a few lessons they need before we ever put a blade in their hands."

Duane squeaks, but it isn't a protest. "Me too?"

"No reason for you not to learn, and you're small enough that self-defense techniques for women will be appropriate. That is, if your father doesn't object."

Morgan shakes his head. "I will never turn down a lesson that makes my son better equipped to survive this world."

It isn't until later, when Morgan and Duane are doing dishes and Sophia's helping Michonne set up to share her room, that Shane finds himself with a partner for the evening patrol of the fenceline.

Merle is quiet for the first half, enough so to almost make Shane uneasy. He's never known the man to be quiet, but neither of them are the same men they were three months ago.

"When Daryl and I first came across your camp, I had every intention to take what we needed and leave, soon as you let down your guard."

Shane snorts. "That theory did cross my mind. Why didn't you?"

"Sophia. Damn little mouseling scurried into our camp hiding out from her old man and batted those big blue eyes at Daryl. Weren't no way in hell Daryl was taking food or protection away from a kid that lost in the world." 

Merle rubs at the stump enough Shane wonders if it hurts.

"I didn't really understand it until the choice was get sober or die. Chonne would have killed me herself if I slipped around her boy, and I sure as hell wasn't gonna make it without her."

Shane understands that. He might not have been under the influence of drugs, but his memories of the time at the Greene farm almost feel like he was. Out of control and dangerous to others. 

He only survived the stab wound by luck and the driving need to keep Sophia safe.

"Sober, I remembered how many times I left Daryl to fend for himself with our old man after our mama died. That's what he saw when that girl came looking for a hidey hole."

"Another lost kid."

"He won't stop looking for her. But he also won't begrudge me staying put to keep building on the fact that she's a wily little survivor."

Shane feels guilty he isn't going out to search. He might not be welcome with Rick's group, but King County is safer than wandering.

"Would he break off from Rick's group if they stopped looking?"

"In a fucking heartbeat. He would even leave the girl's mama behind if she tried to stop. He's going to find her or her walking or die trying."

"Sophia kept a map of where we left notes. If they haven't come here, those places can be marked off your list."

"Appreciate it."

They're reaching the stairs when Merle speaks again. "You good if I fill in your blanks for Chonne?"

"She's got the right to know." His skin crawls at the idea, but at least he doesn't have to say the words again. She deserves to know, if she's staying. 

Another set of eyes on him might be exactly what he needs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The pantiliner thing in a prosthetic socket is weird as hell but works. My diabetic grandmother swore by them for her prosthetic after a PT suggested them.
> 
> Latter portion of the chapter is thanks to some anti-Shane reviews elsewhere. 🙊🙈🙉
> 
> More RBM tomorrow... Half of the med research for Merle I need more there, actually.


	17. Common Ground

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Raiding the hospital brings up bad memories for Shane - and someone who shares the same sort of guilt.

**September 29, 2010**

A week after their population expanded again, Merle announces he's leaving in the morning to start searching again, with Morgan going along. He's leaning on the deck railing, holding a cup of coffee. He and Shane are looking out over the backyard where Michonne has the two children and Morgan going through warmups in the gray light of dawn. In a little bit, it'll progress to kickboxing techniques she says are to build up strength and willingness to hit and be hit.

It's the same thing Merle said about giving the kids boxing lessons. Shane agrees. When he got volunteered to teach community self-defense classes, the hardest part was teaching non-athletes to make hard contact with someone else. Even asking them to take a bump or blow was easier than getting them to deliver one.

He wishes he thought to work with Sophia earlier on something other than weaponry, but the more logical part of his brain reminds him he wasn't up to taking even a practice blow to the chest.

"Where are you gonna start?"

The older man takes a drink of his coffee before replying. "Thought I would check out that farm first. See if anyone circled back, even if just for supplies. Herd should be moved on by now."

"Yeah, no reason for large numbers to linger. Cattle's either eaten or fled."

"I'll leave a note in case Daryl or the others happen by."

"Want Sophia to write them out?"

Merle empties his cup in one last drink and nods. "Couldn't hurt. They're going to respond better to her leaving a breadcrumb trail than me."

"You really up to the hospital today? We can probably get plenty of supplies from other locations."

"Don't think Chonne or Sophia are gonna feel settled til they get what they can out of that place. Andre's happy enough to stay with the kids and critters."

It's been a feature for debate. Having a fourth adult will be invaluable in the hospital, but it means leaving the three children completely alone for most of the day. Sophia's plenty old enough to babysit, but it still makes everyone anxious.

"I keep reminding myself they've got the shelters."

Despite both shelters being mostly root cellar now, there's still room for them to actually act as a shelter. With the radio system Morgan cobbled together, they won't be completely out of contact range. Neither will Merle be, once he travels, if their luck holds on him putting up a couple of repeaters.

"Luck should hold out here. Type of assholes you described ain't looking out like this usually. Scores are around the towns. Hang out, look for movement or signs of occupancy."

"Which we've done, by clearing buildings."

"Just means you need to be more creative in covering up how recent it was. Missing supplies could have left at any time. Board some places up, chain others, make sure you aren't neat when you scavenge."

"Set the scene."

"Precisely right, deputy. Tween you and Chonne, you should be able to think round that."

Considering the woman was an attorney before, he imagines she can definitely wrap her mind around helping.

Down below, they're moving to their actual workout, discarding jump ropes. Merle grins. "You know it's just a matter of time before we're not allowed to just watch anymore."

Shane laughs. He's still doing a restricted version of his old routine, but honestly, a group effort like that actually appeals. "Be interesting. Haven't had a partner for working out in a long time, much less a group. Might just volunteer."

It's been seven weeks since he was originally stabbed and most surgical waits are six. He guesses it's time to step up his game. Hell, Merle's missing an entire hand and going on the road.

"Guess I should finish out daypacks before Sophia thinks I'm slacking off up here."

Merle chuckles and heads inside with Shane, going to wash his coffee cup while Shane does a final check that each pack has water, meal bars, a med kit, and the rest of Sophia's essentials list she worked out with Merle.

Another reason Shane feels reasonably safe is that they've made getting this far down the road difficult. The project isn't finished, only small areas closest in, but when Shane and Morgan are done, the only easy access here will be by water. Even that point Morgan has a few ideas for, but it's going to take months.

And for now, they at least have tripwires to warn the kids if anyone crosses at the shoreline.

Footsteps on the stairs signal the workout ended. Andre is actually the first inside.

"Mer! I jumped!" He's got a child sized jump rope in his hands.

Merle finishes securing the heavy leather prosthetic and grins. "Did you now? Show me."

The rest have arrived, providing the boy with a full audience as he gamely makes three skips of the rope before his coordination fails. "See! I jumped!"

"Yes, you did, little man. You're already ways ahead of Ole Merle."

Andre giggles. "You can't hold both sides."

"Might have to try out some duct tape and prove you wrong."

One thing Shane's noticed is that the longer the kids act nonchalant about the missing hand, the more Merle settles down about it. He even forgoes the cloth cover for hours in the evening, which means the skin is looking much healthier.

Shane can certainly see him rigging a jump rope to amuse the toddler. Andre believes it because he offers his jump rope to the man.

"Now we got another problem, little man. I'm just a little taller than you."

Even the adults join the laughter when Merle unfurls the toddler sized jump rope that barely reaches his waist from the floor.

"Mama will find one for you."

"Sounds like you're scheduled for jump rope tonight," Michonne muses, smiling as she adjusts her daypack to accommodate the katana sheath. 

Merle hands Andre's rope back. "Remind me tonight, alright?"

Taking that as a promise, Andre runs off to put away his jump rope.

"Fee. You need anything before we go?" Shane asks. 

She's sweaty, but seems jazzed as always after exercise. He accepts the hug she offers, pressing a kiss to the shaggy hair that Michonne straightened up so that it looks more purposeful and less Shane guessing how a haircut works.

"Nope. We're good. Got plenty to study and practice inside today." With Andre as their responsibility, the kids are housebound for this first trip.

As they pull out of the driveway in Merle's SUV, Shane can see the kids wave from the deck.

"Even I don't look as worried as you, Shane." Michonne's expression is understanding as she looks back over her shoulder from the passenger seat to where he's seated behind Merle.

"I haven't been farther than the width of my property from her since I found her."

Morgan chuckles. "It's like leaving an infant the first time. Your brain keeps screaming you're headed in the wrong direction. Your emotions don't really distinguish her age and capabilities."

Reassured that he's not going damned crazy at the uneasy feeling, he takes a deep breath and half-watches the changes to the neighborhood as they go by. His place is the smallest one on the road, in acreage, but not the only one already fenced. They fenced off his immediate neighbor's property just by running heavy duty fencing between his property and the next fenced one. 

It's where the goat and lambs are now housed, along with a hodgepodge of other farm animals. All are from the remains of a petting zoo where walkers weren't the danger, but starvation. The situation was dire enough that two-thirds of the animals were dead, and they lost two more after transport.

It makes Shane really dread trying the exotic animal sanctuary.

They have to slow the SUV twice to disengage and reengage Morgan's booby trapped barriers. The rest of the trip to town is uneventful. Merle eyes the military checkpoint thoughtfully.

"Not safe to leave that out here. Humvees aren't secured, and that's a damned Bradley. Needs to be removed and disabled before some predatory group lucks by."

"They're all over the state like that now, though. In the towns large enough for hospitals, particularly. They deployed Guard to oversee medical evacuations, or so they told the sheriff's department."

"Take 'em all then. Hide what you can't use for parts. You know they're designed to run on anything, right?"

Morgan leans forward, interested. "I heard that it's a single fuel system."

Merle nods. "Those fuel drums by the birds? Runs everything in the parking lot."

"We'll put them on the list to clear out. Hell, Sophia can ferry me back and forth in the Bug to fetch them. Park them in the woods on the place across from mine."

"But today, we need medical more than military," Michonne reminds them.

Merle puts the SUV back in gear, heading to the front entrance. "Front door service," he quips.

"Not worried about the upper floors," Michonne says. "We're too small a group to risk the whole building. But the important places are going to be ground floor or basement."

They all step out of the SUV and sling empty duffels over their shoulders as they enter the wide open doors. There are no moving dead in sight, but the lobby bears witness to the fact that living humans were gunned down alongside the walkers.

"Jesus Christ."

Morgan looks sympathetic at Shane's utterance, even as Merle eases around the body to shuffle for ID badges off the ones in scrubs.

"Only saving grace is that the men who did this didn't escape either, not with all their equipment left," Morgan says, passing the ID cards around. Shane recognizes the doctor on his and sighs at the waste of a good man.

Morgan studies the darkened halls. Whatever power still ran when Rick woke up is long gone now or at least not apparent on this floor. "These probably won't work anywhere. There would need to be a server active."

"Better to have them and not need them than vice versa," Merle says.

They all switch on headlamps and Shane leads the tense group toward stairs for the basement. "Dated a woman for about three months who worked in central supply. She bitched it was like working in a tomb."

Creepy words now, but luckily no one comments on his poor phrasing. This stairwell is internal only and dark as hell. Morgan swipes the beam of a bigger flashlight up and down the concrete steps. Splashes of blood can be seen, but no movement.

They ease their way down the stairs, where as predicted, the keycard reader isn't working. However, the door was never meant to withstand the force of crowbars forcing it open. The latch sheers right off and the door pops open.

The downside is now it won't shut behind them.

They opt for the pharmacy first, and the door is more secure than the stairwell door. Even so, it's not a bank vault. The upside is that they've made enough noise there's unlikely to be any loose walkers down here in the oppressive dark.

"Merle and I will collect the list of essentials," Michonne says. "What we can find in this mess. You two open this other door and then stand guard."

She hangs a battery powered lantern that at least gives more light. Once Shane and Morgan prove the other pharmacy door isn't force proof, they return to the outer door, tense and alert as the pair behind them rattles bottles and mumbles over the lists compiled from the PDR and nursing books.

Tapping the glow function on his watch shows him they've been down here half an hour just as the lantern light moves again. 

"We will definitely have to leave things in the lobby if we try other places," Merle mutters.

He has two duffels slung on his back and one rattles as he moves. Shane remembers how the pill bottles he took back in Greenville rattled in the bag.

"You sound like a walking maraca," Shane teases as they ease down the hall to the clean supply.

Merle just snorts, eyeing the dark hallway carefully as Shane and Morgan force access. This time, Michonne and Merle stand guard, while Shane and Morgan fill their duffels with all the loose supplies and any instruments they can actually identify. 

They avoid the packaged trays for the most part, since no one has the training to use things like catheters. But the IV kits go in even if Shane has to volunteer for pincushion practice.

"Christ, Sophia would have loved to have had these when she treated my chest," Shane says as he packs away three wrapped surgical instrument trays. "Instead of a razor blade and tweezers."

"What the hell?" Michonne's headlamp swings inward. 

"She boiled the blades I had for caulk work and used them to debride the wound edges that were going necrotic."

"Sweet Jesus, that poor child. How conscious were you?"

"Through the whole thing."

"Damn. At least Merle managed to pass out when I worked on his arm, and I did have appropriate tools. Benefit of taking shelter in a fire station and having a nurse for a mama."

Shane did note her kit was less haphazard than what he and Sophia collected, but now he knows why.

"Well, if she could save my ass with a razor blade and tweezers, just imagine her with tools and training, right?"

Merle coughs out a laugh. "Maybe we get lucky and that old vet survived."

Shane certainly hopes so. Hershel saved Carl, so he's bound to be a wealth of knowledge for Sophia. Old man wasn't without skills, so odds are better in the long term for him than he thinks they were for a dreamer like Dale.

"If not, we keep collecting knowledge for her. For all of us," Morgan says.

"Shit. We probably need more bags," Shane mutters. Moving the lantern, he's found another row of shelves of various supplies used for the packages. Maybe not all useful, but harder to tell in the dark.

"Can fit a little more in one of my bags," Merle says. There's rattling as he passes the bottle filled bag to Shane. He holds it open while Morgan fills it off with plenty of those gauze pads Sophia used up on his chest.

"We'll make another trip once we have a better inventory," Shane says. "It's not like it's going anywhere."

Michonne agrees. "I would like to try to access the kitchens this trip, if we can."

Shane frowns as he zips up the bag. He shoulders two instead of Merle this time as they make their way back into the hallway.

"Rick said the cafeteria was blocked off and full of the dead."

"The kitchens may be separated enough that we can access the food supplies," she replies.

"Could look for a loading dock. Food delivery usually needs one for a place this big," Merle suggests.

With that idea in mind, they all head for the ground floor and daylight. Shane isn't the only one who shivers in the sunlight as they load bags into the back of the SUV. They load up and circle to the back.

The back of the hospital, where the emergency exit is, is nothing but an uncouth morgue of decaying bodies. They nudge the SUV around them, but when they open the doors at the loading dock, there's little of the smell Shane associates with walkers.

"Poor bastards have been baking too long in the Georgia sun to even smell anymore."

Merle's right, because the remains are more skeletal than corpses now. Shane's grateful, since it lessens recognition factors for him. 

It's perhaps evidence of the chaos as the hospital fell that the dock door isn't pulled all the way down. Merle tests for danger in typical fashion: he bangs the metal of the blade on his prosthetic on the door.

Nothing makes a sound.

Once the door is rolled slowly up, they discover where a good number of the trigger happy soldiers died. It seems, in the end, they weren't even safe from themselves. They have to move a few of the bodies to have a path to where they need to go.

Their luck doesn't hold entirely when they find the area they need. But there's only six walkers and four of them, so it's an easy matter to drag the finally at rest bodies aside when they're done.

Michonne makes sure they get no more unwanted guests by simply locking the door leading into the cafeteria. She turns and joins them in taking inventory.

"Not as well stocked as I hoped, but everyone's delivery schedules were probably shot to hell in the end."

Merle drags fingers along the industrial sized cans. "Still more than we could eat in six months or more. I'm gonna make a run for that military cargo truck."

The rest of the run goes peaceably, mostly sweating through their shirts loading the food into the big cargo truck's bed. Michonne even takes a big stock pot and fills it with utensils and knives for good measure.

They're considering leaving when Morgan gets the idea to check for other departments that would need a loading dock. He scores cleaning supplies and toilet paper.

Michonne looks a little too overjoyed by the quantities of cheap industrial toilet paper, but Shane can't blame her. It's a luxury that won't last, but while they have it, rejoice.

He's on the dock as Morgan stacks the last of the boxes they can fit on the truck. Merle's relieving the soldiers of guns and ammo, but Shane is fighting down the feeling of the last time he saw this field of the dead.

"You would have had to leave him, either way."

He nearly startles out of his skin at Michonne's voice just behind him.

"What?"

"Your partner. There's no way you could have gotten him out, much less cared for him. Sophia and I only saved our patients because you were both reasonably mobile and able to cooperate with your care. He would have starved to death outside this place."

He searches her expression and finds nothing but sympathy. "A guardian angel stayed and saved him. You saved his family. If he ever returns to his right mind, he will remember that is the important point."

"Rick's not crazy. That was me."

"You don't leave someone you love to be eaten if you are entirely sane. I would know."

At his startled look, she shrugs. "We all carry that darkness in us, Shane. You and I have just crossed that line more than others."

"Who?"

Fortunately, she doesn't need the elaboration he can't manage. The unexpected kinship is throwing him for a loop.

"Andre's father and our friend, Terry. I left Andre with them to seek out food because the camp wasn't providing it. The camp was being overrun from within when I returned. Those bastards smoked pot while watching my baby."

He's not sure he wants to think about a toddler, especially sweet, cheerful Andre, with no safe adult as a camp is being swarmed. 

"I killed the walkers attacking our area. Terry was already bitten, but not dead. I snatched up my son and I left Mike weeping over his friend."

"That's not your fault if he got eaten."

"Depends on how you see it. I knew he wasn't capable of saving himself, but I didn't care. I still hear him screaming, sometimes, when the night's most quiet. He was Andre's father, and I left him to die a horrific death."

She's so solemn he realizes that while he let Merle tell her out of a sense of both justice and self-punishment, she may understand him better than either man he did speak with.

"I still hear Otis."

"It is the burden of a conscience. If you were still crazy, still broken, you would not feel that burden."

"Everything alright out here?"

Merle is looking between them, brow furrowed.

"Shane and I were just finding our common ground."

The redneck grunts and passes Shane the SUV keys. "Gonna take the cargo truck with Morgan."

Shane nods and the other men load up. Knowing they won't leave without them, he follows Michonne to the SUV.

For the first time since he cripples Otis and left him to die to get supplies to Carl, he truly understands the adage that a burden shared is a burden halved. He no longer feels marooned on an island of rightfully earned guilt. It doesn't make him any less blood soaked, but he's not alone.

When she gives him a ghost of a smile as they follow the other truck out of town, he thinks she feels the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not a lot of Sophia this chapter, but I'm sure she'll make up for it next chapter.
> 
> I had been musing in a world where Andre survives, what would have been his father's fate. This is the result.


	18. My Dad Will Come For Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sophia is snatched by the Claimers, but she's no damsel in distress.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warning: This is a dark chapter. While not graphic and Sophia is entirely safe, it features the Claimers and is told from Sophia's POV. 
> 
> If that could potentially cause issues, please skip to the summary at the end.

** October 6, 2010 **

Sophia empties the pecan picker into her bucket again, grinning that the bucket is nearly half full. This is some of the easiest gathering she’s ever done and entertaining to boot. Duane’s halfway across the yard they’re in, sitting on the steps to the back porch and drinking a bottle of water. 

With Merle out on another search for his brother, and hopefully by conjunction, Sophia’s mama, Shane brought them both into town while he gathers supplies. Well, technically, Sophia’s gathering pecans. Duane’s the lookout for any walkers.

It’s a momentary distraction that makes Duane miss the strangers’ approach. Sophia just barely catches a glimpse through the fringe of her hair in her eyes. She’s not sure what instinct possesses her to pretend she hasn’t seen them, but she turns her head enough that her lips can’t be seen.

“Duane! Hide! Now!” she hisses. She’s been seen, but the younger boy hasn’t. Her radio is with her pack, which Duane snatched into the bushes with him. She prays he remembers the emergency code - and to keep it silenced.

He does as she orders, rolling into the overgrown bushes by the steps with easy obedience. Sophia rolls the pecan picker again, keeping her eyes hidden under the shaggy drape of her hair.

“Hey, boy! Where’s your people?”

She straightens, glad the guise of being male seems to hold steady for everyone who doesn’t know her already, like Merle. Flicking her hair back, she shrugs. “Around. You looking for a camp?”

“Might be.” He’s acting all friendly, but enough of his tone reminds her of Ed that she wouldn’t trust him even without Shane and Merle’s constant drills to be paranoid of strange males. The fact that the other man with him ducked into the alcove formed by the next yard’s azalea bushes and fence definitely sets off warning bells.

“Well, you stay put right there, and I’ll call my dad over to meet you.”

“No, I think I’ll come over there to wait for him.” It’s a challenge, because the man keeps coming closer. She drops the pecan picker and draws, getting the Walther leveled in time to fire, but the man ducks.

It doesn’t save him entirely. She sees his shoulder rock with the impact of the .22 bullet, and he screams. That’s when she realizes she missed one of the strangers, because she’s grabbed from behind. There’s a painful impact and then… darkness.

When she wakes, her head is throbbing like nothing she’s ever felt, and a small hand is patting her shoulder. She can hear a child’s voice saying, “Oh, please don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead.”

She blinks, flinching at the light, and hears a little sob, followed by, “He’s not dead.”

Once she can focus, she can see two small kids, younger than Duane. She’s rolled against a large dog crate, the kind used for the really big breeds, like Danes. The reason all the kid is doing is touching her shoulder is because she can barely fit her hand through the gaps in the crate’s bars.

Sophia struggles to remember all her lessons. Observe. Learn. _Then_ react.

It hurts like utter hell to move her head, and she can feel the stickiness of what’s probably dried blood down the left side of her face. Her hands are bound behind her, but an experimental tug shows her that whoever did it is no expert. There’s enough give that she might work her way free, but not while she doesn’t know what is behind her. Wiggling her feet shows her that her ankles are bound, too.

Focusing on the kids, she realizes they’re wearing dog collars. Both of them are filthy, and their faces tearstained. She fights off the sense of rage that induces and takes a deep breath to steady herself, just like Michonne taught her.

“Hey, kids. Where are we?” she asks. She can smell urine on top of general body odor and the screaming ball of fury in the back of her mind builds.

“I don’t know,” the kid who spoke before says. Sophia thinks that kid might be a girl, but it’s hard to tell for sure with the hair cut short like Sophia’s is. “They ran out of gas. Half of them went out looking and came back with you.”

Sophia wishes them luck. There’s not a drop of viable gas anywhere in the county seat here unless it’s squirreled away in a locked garage they haven’t accessed yet.

“Do you know where they’re going?”

“One of them said something about a town to the south.” The kid whimpers. “That buys _kids_.”

Sophia allows herself a minute to mentally run through every filthy phrase she’s ever heard. With Merle’s mouth, that’s a lot. It buys her time to think.

“Was one of them wounded when they came back?”

The kids both nod. “He was dripping blood everywhere. It made Joe really mad, cos he said Uncle Lou is too stupid to live and that Harley and Billy are too for not doing a bandage.”

That’s good news, because if he was dripping blood, that leaves a trail. She smiles slowly, even though it hurts her head to do so. “My dad will come for me. He will save us.”

“You still have a daddy?” the second kid says, looking pitiful. “Ours died and Uncle Lou doesn’t want us.”

“I do. And he’ll come, I promise you.” She can tell that her belt knife and gun are missing, just from how naked her hip feels where the gun rides and that she’s not laying on any hard items on the other side. She wonders if they found her boot knife, but she can’t quite tell. “Are any of them paying us any attention?”

The older kid shakes her head. “No. They tied something on Uncle Lou’s arm and then Joe led Dan, Billy, and Len out to look for gas. Harley’s supposed to be watching us and Patrick, but he went into his tent.”

“Patrick?” _Oh, Jesus, is there a third kid around here?_

“Yeah. He’s older, like you. What’s your name?”

“Fee.”

“That’s kind of a funny name for a boy. I’m Molly, and my brother’s Luke.”

“Molly, if I roll over, is anyone gonna notice and get mad?” She doesn’t want her hands exposed to the camp or whatever this is when she works on freeing herself.

“No. Uncle Lou’s already pretty drunk. He wouldn’t even notice one of the bad ones trying to bite him right now.”

Sophia wriggles and manages to turn herself over despite the throbbing pain in her head. It gives her a good view of the camp, and from the looks of it, they’ve been squatting here in town a day or two. She knows this yard. It’s on their list for future supplies, with nothing urgent they wanted right now. She bites her lip against the pain from the cut on her head being rubbed into the dirt. 

_Observe. Learn. React._

The dog crate that is holding the two children is against a metal shed, the kind that people stick their lawnmowers in. She’s been rolled against it, ignored for whatever reason that passes for logic with these assholes.

The other kid mentioned is definitely older, probably older than Sophia herself. Before she can wonder why he isn’t saving the little ones, she spots his ankle - and the chain. He’s literally leashed to one of the vehicles, complete with a lock on the damned chain looped around his ankle.

The seething wrath that adds to her already ignited temper helps her ignore the pain as she dislocates her left thumb, just like Merle taught her. When she asked the man why he didn’t escape the handcuffs the same way, he gave her the longest, most serious look she’s ever seen on him and told her to stay the fuck away from drugs.

It’s equally painful to reset the joint, but she can’t wait to do it back home. She’s certain to the core of her being that Shane’s coming, and she needs to be prepared to help him. Easing her hand down to her boot, she grimaces when the knife’s gone. She likes that knife. It’s _Shane’s_.

Patrick catches her movement and his eyes widen behind the cracked glasses. She raises her finger to her lips, praying he’s not somehow brainwashed to like these awful bastards who are caging and chaining children like animals.

He looks down, nodding as if to himself and sits against the wheel of the truck he’s chained to. He wraps his arms around his knees and peeks up at her. 

She can’t get the remaining rope completely loose, but with her hands mostly free, she eases her belt buckle open, finding the little clasp that releases the buckle from the leather. If her luck holds, the little knife Merle and Shane brought back from a local knife collector’s house as more of a novelty will give her more advantage than she has right now.

It cuts through the rope easily, and she stuffs the loose rope in her pocket. She sits up, keeping the knife carefully out of sight. When there’s no movement or reaction, she frees her ankles too, hiding that rope away in another pocket.

“Hey, Molly? Is your uncle a good man?” Sophia can’t imagine he is, not if he allows this treatment of his own flesh and blood.

“No. Not anymore.” She sobs, quietly, like Sophia used to when Ed was still alive and being quiet when you cried was the most important thing in the world.

“Alright.” She eases to her feet, fighting the urge to vomit from the pain in her head. She _knows_ Shane’s going to find her, _knows it in her very bones_ , but he didn’t teach her all he taught her for her to sit around like some fairy tale princess. She unlatches the dog crate, feeling unbelievably sickened that it’s not even secured. These kids are so petrified they can’t even think of escaping.

The nausea passes, and she creeps across the camp to the older boy. He’s quiet as she checks the lock at his ankle. “Do you know where any wire is?”

He nods, unkempt dark hair framing gaunt features. “Back of this truck is a lot of junk.” 

She leaves him to pull two pieces of wire from the debris. Merle showed her this with bobby pins, but the theory is the same. It takes her four tries, because her head hurts and her hands shake, but the lock pops open. His ankle is so skinny she can feel all the bones.

Patrick stares at her in shock. She realizes he didn’t expect what she was doing to work. “I need you to grab the kids and take them along that fence to the next house. There’s a storm shelter there and those lock from the inside. Don’t open the door unless it’s me or my dad. His name is Shane.”

“Aren’t you coming with us?” He sounds so terrified of his pending freedom that she feels tears prick her eyes.

“Not yet. I gotta help my dad. He’s going to be coming to find me.” And she can’t leave two men as bad as these to maybe follow them or to hurt Shane.

“Okay. Storm shelter. Lou’s in the truck and Harley in the blue tent. They put your gun and other stuff in the other truck.” He creeps across the camp and coaxes the kids out of the crate. When Luke can’t seem to believe he’s free, Patrick lifts him into his arms and carries him to safety. Molly follows, darting worried looks back at Sophia.

In the distance, Sophia hears a muffled gunshot. She prays it’s Shane and not one of the other men firing a weapon. Uncle Lou is passed out in the seat of the truck Patrick was chained to, doors open for a cross breeze. From the blood soaking the bandage, she can tell none of these monsters know anything about first aid. She considers taking his pulse before remembering he kept his family in a fucking _dog crate_.

Plunging the buckle knife into his unprotected eye should be horrifying.

Instead, it doesn’t feel any different than when she lays a walker to rest.

There’s another gunshot and then the best sight Sophia’s seen since that night at the cabin in the woods.

Shane’s found her. But she can’t run to him and cry out that she knew he would come, because there’s still another man alive in this camp. 

But she eases to the rear of the truck, making sure he sees her. He stiffens when she points at the tent, signalling one. His enraged expression reminds her of the cartoons they show of a bull about to charge at a matador, but he nods, acknowledging her warning. His clothing is covered in blood, and she thinks about the fact that she only heard two gunshots with four men out of the camp.

It’s probably the same as the blood on her hands, sticky with goo that isn’t just blood, _isn’t walker blood_ , and she’s going to _just not think_ about it being in someone’s _eyeball_ less than five minutes ago.

The next gunshot isn’t muffled, too close to be confusing about its direction.

“Sophia!” His voice sounds awful, like he almost can’t manage to speak, and she runs to him, folding into the crushing bear hug with enough relief that it almost fades away the pain in her head.

“I knew you would find me.” Her grip on his sturdy frame is equally tight. 

“I would search to the end of the world to find you, baby girl. Let’s get out of here before the gunshots attract walkers. Duane’s locked in the storm shelter at the house we were in.”

She laughs a little hysterically that Shane hid Duane away the same way she hid away the other kids. 

“Fee? Are you okay?” Shane lets her go to start looking her over for injuries. She sees him swallow hard at the gash at her temple. “They died too easy,” he says, voice raw with anger.

“They did. I rescued kids. I sent them to the storm shelter.” She points a trembling hand at the open dog crate. “Two of them were in that.”

“Fucking _bastards_.” 

Sophia agrees with that completely. “My stuff is in the other truck,” she mumbles. She wants it back, because it’s _hers_. 

He doesn’t let her go when he goes to retrieve the bag. She stuffs her holster in her waistband, not wanting to rethread the buckle knife while it’s covered in the monster’s blood and goo.

“We’ll go get Duane and the truck, then your foundlings,” Shane explains. She nods, flinching when the motion hurts her head.

She’s held tightly to him again, a kiss pressed gently to the top of her head. He’s shaking, and his voice is thick with unshed tears. “This was too close, Fee, too damned close.”

“You came for me.”

This is what she trusted he would do, when he told her the awful thing he did to save Carl. If Shane would sacrifice a mostly innocent man for someone he loves, she knew he was coming for her.

She knows now that she’s capable of the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sophia is spotted by the Claimers while in town with Duane and Shane. She wounds one of the men, but is captured and carried back to their camp. When she wakes, she's tied up next to a dog crate with two other children. The kids tell her that the group catches children to sell to another group, so she escapes, frees the children, and kills one of the two men left to keep watch over the children. Shane eliminates the men who went out searching for supplies and the other man left behind.
> 
> While this is the group that had at least one rapist and a pedophile, Sophia is claimed under their rules by one of the other men, thus why she's left to the consequences of her concussion and generally unharmed. The Claiming is not explained in this chapter, but will come up in the followup chapter with Shane and Michonne as they care for the children Sophia rescued and Patrick explains life among the Claimers.
> 
> All three children are canon children from the prison era, with different backstories. Like some of my other stories, this one has gone pretty much rogue from canon for season three/four, so expect in this and its partner story to see characters appear out of order for seasons or even geography. :)


	19. Warrior Princess

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the aftermath of the Claimers' deaths, the adults learn of the fate Sophia escaped and freed the other children from.

** October 6, 2010 **

Shane sits heavily at the kitchen table, feeling much older than his thirty-plus years. Michonne slides a steaming mug in front of him, and he catches the mixed scents of chocolate and alcohol. He hesitates, because he hasn't touched alcohol since the CDC.

"Tonight calls for more than just a warm drink," Michonne urges. He sees her own mug clasped in her slim hands like it is a lifeline.

He can barely believe today's events and he lives through the worst of them. For Michonne, who coaxed terrified children into trusting her when for some reason they wanted to cling to him despite his blood soaked clothing, it had to be a hell of a shock, too.

Sipping the warm drink, he coughs at the intensity. "Drop of chocolate to the rum?"

She smiles, just a glimmer of one, and nods. "Not as good as when I've got actual chocolate, but close enough with the powder. I know you've been abstaining, but tonight, you need something to warm your bones."

Shane shivers at that, but it makes him realize he's been at that edge all evening. Shivering as if he's cold, all from the shock that set in once the adrenaline crash hit and the children were safe. He cups the mug and drinks deeply.

"There's more if you want it. The rum I added after, so what's in the pot is what I gave all the children."

He appreciates the explanation that he can have more without the alcohol boost. "It's amazing they can sleep at all."

"Well, Duane was sheltered from the worst of it, and I think Sophia stayed focused enough on what we taught her to soften the trauma level. It's the other three I worried about until they just dropped from exhaustion."

"No telling how long it's been since they last felt safe to sleep. Where are they?"

"In Sophia's room. The two little ones are in my bunk and Patrick in Sophia's. I'll take Merle's bed for the night and he can take the couch."

Shane doesn't even have to ask where Sophia is. He knows she'll have that camp cot out and in his room. "We are going to need more beds again."

Merle and Morgan are out overnight at least half the week, but they are getting crowded. They've gotten by so far by Michonne and Andre sharing the full sized bottom bunk in Sophia's room.

"Merle can retrieve that camper from your neighbor's place and park it here. Save us from his snoring, and since he knows how to fill propane tanks, he can keep it heated when he's here to use it."

"The house next door might be more comfortable." With the fencing installed between Shane's place and the neighbor on the other side, they technically have three secure houses, with plans for Gloria's property next.

"Perhaps once he finds his brother. I doubt he would want to be that isolated otherwise, or to heat a building that size."

Her reasoning makes sense to Shane, and Merle definitely isn't the creature comforts type. "Good to have options."

She concentrates on her mug for long enough to finish it and refill both mugs from the pot on the stove. "You do know you just adopted three more children, right?"

"Why would they choose me?" Michonne, with her established and confident motherhood, seems a more likely option. Sure, Sophia loves him, but they were on their own long before Michonne or Morgan came along.

"Because Sophia chose you. Because she told them you would come and save them, and you did." Michonne reaches out and takes one of his hands, squeezing it gently. "They may not have seen what you did, Shane, but they know you killed their boogeymen."

The fact that he killed five men today, two of them up close and personal without his gun, hasn't really set in yet. He hosed down outside, removing sticky drying blood. He notes randomly that he needs to burn the clothes he left down there, because there will be no salvaging them by now. 

It's Sophia he worries for, after 'Uncle Lou'. She showered and let him stitch the cut on the side of her face from being pistol whipped. They were a bit in their own world as Michonne cared for the two younger children. Patrick got himself clean and into a set of Shane's sweats that swallow him but seem comforting to him anyway.

The kids have been fed so little for weeks that getting warm chicken noodle soup in them was a task. None of them wanted to talk, and neither Shane nor Michonne is ready to force the issue.

The proximity alarm Morgan installed chirrups. Michonne and Shane both rise and look out the windows. A familiar SUV rolls through the gates.

"I'll go give them an update to keep it soft and sedate coming in. Why don't you go check on the children?"

Shane nods and heads down the hall. Duane's deeply asleep, secure in the safety of his surroundings. Sophia's asleep on her cot in his room, Lucius curled against her belly like a living stuffed animal. In the former home gym, Shane verifies the two smaller kids are asleep.

But Patrick is awake. He blinks blearily at Shane, relaxing as he identifies him. The teen reaches for his cracked glasses and fumbles them on.

"It's just Duane's father and another of our people coming home after what happened today." Merle and Morgan weren't due back for another day, but even with Patrick confirming none of the men escaped, they're rattled.

Patrick still looks wary.

"Do you want to come meet them both?" Knowledge may help, Shane thinks.

The boy sits up, inching down to the ladder and easing quietly to the floor. He follows Shane down the hall, keeping Shane's bulk between him and the newcomers.

Patrick eyes them carefully when he's introduced, keeping Shane partially between him and the other men. Shane is starting to suspect Michonne is right about the expansion of the number of children he's personally responsible for.

Morgan smiles reassuringly, even as he heads down the hall. Shane understands the need to see Duane is safe with his own two eyes.

"Have a little cocoa," Michonne offers, passing Patrick a mug. Shane wonders if she spiked that one, too, but if she did, the boy deserves it tonight, he thinks.

Patrick takes a drink, but backs up to the counter. Merle shows far more attentiveness to the teen's fear than Shane expects. The big redneck goes into the living room, settling on the couch.

"Do you know how old the other children are?" Michonne asks. 

"Molly is eight and Luke is five." Patrick sips at the cocoa, avoiding looking around. "I'm fourteen, I think. It's October, right?"

"Yeah. The sixth," Shane tells him.

"Then I'm fourteen, as of seven days ago."

Michonne takes Merle a bowl of leftovers and leaves another bowl on the table for Morgan. Patrick doesn't flinch away from her movements, but Shane stays put near the pantry to keep him reassured he isn't leaving the room. He catches the little flicks of the boy's eyes toward him, making sure he's still nearby.

"How long were you with them?" he asks, hoping Patrick is settled enough to answer. Michonne settles on the couch next to Merle, but she's paying close attention.

"Couple of weeks. Lou and the kids were there longer. Don't think they were so bad at first, but from what Harley muttered sometimes, Joe changed after his wife died. Harley didn't think some of the men would have been allowed to join up with Joe's wife around. Harley was okay. Usually the one who fed us."

Shane has no regrets over killing any of the men who at the least allowed children to be caged and collared and chained like dogs. He can tell from the damaged skin at Patrick's throat that the teen will probably carry permanent scars despite Sophia's nursing care. 

"One of the kids told Sophia they were going to be sold to some man to the south."

Shane hears a sound he might call a subvocal growl from Merle's direction.

"I'm not sure how true it was. Was Dan who brought him up after he joined up last week. Dan gave me the creeps. Got beat down a couple of times when he was learning the rules of claiming."

Patrick shudders, seeming involuntarily.

"Claiming?"

"Anytime they saw something or someone they wanted, they yelled claimed. Then no one else could touch on pain of beating, sometimes until they died."

"Someone? Like children?"

"Yeah. Lou claimed Molly and Luke when their dad died. But he got bored with providing for them. The first man who claimed me when they cornered me in a treehouse in some neighborhood died for being considered greedy. Harley stepped up then. He was nicer. Safer."

Shane feels ice on his spine as the teen explains matter-of-factly about being considered property. It worries him about how much of Patrick's easy acceptance of being here is from that.

"That's why Fee was left alone. Harley claimed him, too."

The rage that flickers in Shane's very damn soul reignites as he thinks of Sophia being treated as a possession. But the reaction might terrify the boy, so he controls it with every ounce of self-control he's regained since the farm. 

"What happened to your parents?"

"Dad died of the 'flu', back before the government admitted what the virus was. Mom made it to some time in early August, I think. My watch broke, and it was easy to lose time after that. I got by with scrounging food from abandoned houses and sleeping in high up places."

It sounds like Patrick was on his own even longer than Sophia. Shane wonders how many other kids ended up on their own, especially considering the capacity of parents to sacrifice for their children.

Patrick finishes his cocoa and washes the mug. "They're safe here, right?" Shane almost misses it, and the boy speaks again. "Molly and Luke, they're safe?"

It's heartbreaking that he asks for the two younger kids, not himself.

"Yes, Patrick. They're as safe as we can make them here. You are too."

"I hope so." The kid yawns. "What time do I need to be up? There's chores, right?"

"I'll wake you for breakfast. If you want to help Fee and Duane with the animals next door or the plants, you can. But there's no required chores until you're healthier."

Shane saw the boy shirtless, and he's gone without regular meals longer than he was with the Claimers. He's afraid to even start self-defense lessons with Patrick just yet.

As the boy heads back to bed, Shane reminds himself to see if they can figure out how to replace his glasses, too.

"I wish you had the time to make the bastards suffer," Merle says, once Patrick's out of hearing range.

Shane goes to sit in his recliner, too damned tense for anything else. He wishes he felt like he could leave the house, but even his usual perimeter run seems impossible tonight. His hands shake.

"Shane?" It's Michonne, leaning forward enough she snags his hand again. "Today was not your fault. We've all let those two wander further than we should out and about."

Intellectually, he knows that. None of them want to smother the kids and make them as rebellious of adult oversight as Carl became. But today, he left them outside for ten minutes and Sophia got snatched.

"How did you track them down?" Merle asks, setting aside his empty bowl. 

"Sophia shot one of them before another one knocked her out. He bled all the way back to their camp." 

The terror rears its ugly head. Hiding in the shrubbery, Duane didn't know who was shot. The extra five minutes to hide the boy in the storm shelter just escalated it. He would have sworn, before today, that nothing would frighten him more than Rick being shot right in front of him.

"Damned good thinking on her behalf."

Shane agrees. She had no way of knowing they would leave a trail, but the gunshot alerted him even as Duane buzzed him on the radio. She followed all her training today.

"She already freed the kids and was killing their captors when I got there. Said anyone who put kids in cages deserved to die."

"You gotta be shitting me."

Shane's laugh contains no humor at all. "Remember that belt buckle knife you gave her as a joke?"

Merle looks impressed. "Damn thing worked?"

"They missed it, so she dislocated her thumb, cut herself free, sent the kids to safety, and killed the man she already wounded. Just glad I got there to finish off the last one."

The four men before are a blur. Two met his gun. One met his knife and is the reason he was blood soaked because the bastard bled like a pig when Shane slit his throat. 

The fourth man was the only one who got the drop on him, but Shane's never fought fair, not once the chips are down. The man with the long gray hair is probably a walker, because Shane didn't pause to finish him off after breaking his neck just like Randall.

The fifth and last one is the only man to show guilt or fear. He never even tried to draw his weapon. Something in the man's eyes reminded him of himself, that night in the field. Unlike his own suicidal moment, that man won't limp away or rise to roam in search of flesh. Shane put a bullet right between his eyes.

But it means that Sophia killed a man tonight and suddenly, being on the opposite side of the house is too goddamn much space. He mumbles a goodnight and stumbles down the hall, passing Morgan on the way. The older man lets him go.

Sophia is still curled against the big cat, mind dulled to sleep by pain medication. He sits on the floor beside her cot, one hand smoothing her blonde hair. For perhaps the first time ever, Lucius allows him close enough to touch. 

Shane nearly lost her today, if luck hadn't aligned precisely in their favor. He wants to hide her away and protect her forever, but he knows he can't. Her staunch independence is part of who she is, and he can't stifle it. She's the warrior princess she's dreamed to be.

If she died today, there's nothing that would have kept him from finishing what he started in that moonlit field.

Instead, he sits on a hardwood floor, listening to her breathe, and thanks whatever higher power exists that today wasn't the end of both of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't realize until I started getting reviews that I was unclear that Shane got all the Claimers that were outside the camp.


	20. Because You're My Friend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An accident in the night leads to an intense conversation about second chances between Shane and Michonne.

**October 10, 2010**

“Shane?”

He wakes at the hesitant voice in his doorway. It takes him a minute to recognize Molly as he blinks away sleep. “What’s wrong, sweetheart?”

She makes a hiccupping sound, so he sits up, sliding his feet to the floor. “C’mere, Molly.”

The reason for her hesitance in approaching becomes obvious when she takes a couple of steps forward. The unmistakable whiff of urine reaches him even as she hugs herself.

“Hey, kiddo, it’s fine. These things happen.”

Shane’s grateful for Michonne’s caution that children often revert in many ways after trauma. He knows that, in general, from training as a deputy, but the reminder that he’s not just responsible for passing vulnerable children off to a social worker now was necessary. He tugs the girl in for a hug. 

It surprises him just how clingy the two younger kids are, craving physical contact. Him, Michonne, and the other kids are all fair game. Molly’s wary still of both the other grown men, but Luke’s joined Andre in the Merle duckling parade here and there if Shane’s busy. He hasn’t left their little compound since the children came into his care.

Then again, Merle and Morgan suspended their search for Daryl and the others to make progress on the fortifications of their home territory instead. Shane doesn't think any of them feel comfortable venturing very far yet.

The children aren’t the only ones with nightmares about the Claimers.

Molly accepts the comfort, crying softly against his chest for a few minutes, and they both ignore her wet pajamas. It reminds Shane of Carl being sick once, while Lori was out of town at her grandmother’s. The boy vomited all over Rick, but instead of worrying about cleaning it off himself, his brother concentrated on calming the panicky child and cleaning him first.

He thinks it is the first time he’s thought of Rick without that wrenching combo of loss and guilt coloring the memory so painfully he can’t breathe. Rick isn't perfect by any means, but there's an example in his relationship with Carl that Shane can draw from now.

Shane smooths Molly’s barely there prickly hair on her head. An infected set of sores on her scalp made shaving what little curls she had necessary, but she doesn’t seem to mind. All three of the rescued children are sporting hair shorter than his own for now, courtesy of Sophia and her clippers. The boys weren't letting Molly go bald without company.

“Let’s get you in the shower, alright?” he suggests once she’s quieted and just resting against his shoulder. She nods, and he carries her to his own bathroom, because the girl is fascinated with being allowed to shower instead of use the bathtub.

Setting her on her feet next to the shower stall, he adjusts the water to the lukewarm she prefers. He puts a towel and washcloth out. “Just put your wet things in the bucket by the sink and get washed up. I’ll go get you some clean clothes.”

Molly nods mutely, already tugging off her pajama top as he heads out of the bathroom. All three of the other kids are awake in their bedroom. The new bunk bed houses Patrick and Luke, letting Molly and Sophia share the original bunk bed. 

“Is she okay?” Patrick asks, sounding worried.

“Just a nightmare,” Shane reassures the kids. “She’s taking a shower.”

He starts stripping the soiled bedding off the bed. Sophia sits up and slides down the ladder. “I’ll take her some clothes,” she offers. 

Shane thanks her, glad that Michonne’s foresight in knowing nighttime pull ups leak leading to having a protective mattress pad on the bottom bunk already. He makes a mental note that they need to get one for Luke’s bed, just in case, since they only had the two for full sized mattresses. Michonne and Andre have taken over Merle’s old room at this point, although the big redneck currently prefers the couch to moving into the camper he’s set up inside the compound.

Tossing the wet sheets and blanket in the washer, he strips off his own shirt, knowing he might as well change it after picking Molly up. Sophia’s in the bathroom with the younger girl still, even as Michonne peers out her door. Like the kids, she wears pajamas, although he somehow doubts she wore pastel kitten motifs in her old life. 

“Everything okay?” she asks. Her dark eyes flicker down to the heavy scarring on his chest. He resists the urge to cover the ugly, twisted mass, but it's a close call that he doesn't.

“Molly wet the bed,” he explains softly, even though she probably guesses that from the bedding going in the washer. 

“Do you need me to help?” She steps out in the hallway, shutting the door gently behind her. Andre sleeps like only toddlers can, so starting the washer won’t wake him, but voices sometimes do.

“Sophia’s in with her, but it might not hurt.”

Michonne steps past him, brushing against his back as he adds detergent to the washer. He shivers a little at the unexpected contact before deciding to wait and start the washer with Molly’s clothes in it too. Grabbing the Lysol out of the bathroom, he sprays a mist over the mattress to chase away any remaining sour scent in the room before making up the bed with fresh sheets and a blanket. Luke is back asleep and Patrick not far from it, both seeming to trust he’ll look after Molly.

When he returns to his room, Michonne has the girl bundled into a big towel, chatting softly. The bucket he uses to treat workout clothes and his undershirts is pushed out into the bedroom, so he takes the wet things and goes to get the washer started. Figuring the girl probably could use a warm drink before returning to bed, he ventures into the kitchen.

He isn’t surprised to see that Merle’s awake.

“Which kid’s having a bad night?” he asks softly when he sees Shane. 

Shane still isn’t sure what the burly man said to make Luke comfortable in his presence, but the more the man gives small tidbits of advice about dealing with children recovering from abuse, the more Michonne and Shane both confirm Merle’s a survivor himself. It explains a lot about both Dixons, if Shane lets go of his prejudices and really analyzes a lot of their behavior from the quarry.

"Molly." Shane fills the kettle and sets it to boil. He reaches for the canister of Nido, measuring out enough milk powder for Sophia and Molly both. He's not going full cocoa, like Michonne makes, but more something his mother made when he was young. Adding cinnamon to both mugs, he checks the kettle, and it's just warm enough to dissolve the powder now.

Michonne will probably want a cup of tea before she returns to bed, so he puts the kettle back on the burner. He's stirring honey into the mugs when Michonne and the girls venture out into the kitchen.

"Here I was going to make cocoa, but that smells almost as good."

"There's water in the kettle still," Shane tells her. 

Sophia reaches for the mug with a soft smile. It's not the first time he's made it for her after a nightmare. "Try it, Molly. It's really good."

The younger girl frowns into her mug. "Warm milk?"

"Not just milk." Sophia offers her mug to Michonne for a taste.

"Cinnamon and honey." Michonne smiles. "Maybe I should try this instead of tea."

Shane can take a hint. He gets another mug out and makes one for Michonne, too, before shutting the burner off.

Molly ventures to sip at hers. "It's sweet. Like our breakfast oatmeal."

"Shane's mama used to make it for him when he was little," Sophia tells Molly.

"Really?"

"Well, she made it with regular milk, but the idea is the same." As an adult, his schedule was often erratic enough that buying milk was a gamble. Switching to the Nido powder solved most of that issue, especially since he could take the powdered milk camping or hiking when he got the chance. The added bonus is that it doesn't taste like watery crap like the other brands of powdered milk. Milk has no business being low-fat.

"We have milk, though?" Molly questions, looking sleepy.

"I've never tried warm goat milk," Shane says. "Maybe tomorrow at bedtime." They boil the goat milk to pasteurize it, but they also fast chill it after. With more kids in the house, he suspects it'll get used faster now.

Sophia takes hers and Molly's empty mugs to wash. "C'mon, Molly. Let's get to sleep so we can go fishing in the morning after chores."

Right now, Molly and Luke's chores are more following the three older kids around and watching, but they do it faithfully, fascinated by the animals and plants. Patrick probably shouldn't be doing as much as he does, but there's a fine line between protecting him and letting him recover at his own pace.

Both girls hug Shane and Michonne, and Sophia crosses the living room to 'ruffle' Merle's buzzcut. Her reward is a gruff laugh and an order to get her scrawny butt in bed. She giggles, but the interaction has Molly eyeing their oldest resident with curiosity instead of wariness.

"You scoot off to bed, too, Molly Dolly."

The eight-year-old girl surprises Shane by giggling and trotting off after Sophia.

"Girl's about decided I ain't gonna bite her," Merle mumbles, yawning and rolling over. "You two go flirt on your end of the house."

Shane laughs, shaking his head at Merle's pretended grumpiness. If the man actually minded the regular sleep disturbances of being in a house with five kids with high odds someone will have nightmares of some variety each night, he would sleep in his camper downstairs. Michonne is smiling as she washes her mug and places it next to the girls'.

"Morning is going to come awfully early," she murmurs.

Shane agrees, heading for his room and hearing Michonne behind him. The laundry can be switched over in the morning. He's surprised when she actually follows him instead of returning to her own bed, easing the door shut.

"Everything okay?" he asks, echoing her earlier inquiry unconsciously.

"I overheard Molly telling Sophia she is afraid we will get bored of her and Luke like her uncle did."

"Oh, hell." Shane starts for the door, but Michonne stops him with a palm laid gently in the center of his chest. He shivers, just like in the hall, and twists away slightly so she's no longer close to the scarring.

It earns him a concerned expression, but she concentrates on the more important topic and drops her hand. "Right now, we're all sort of making it up as we go, but maybe we should treat them like Andre. Routines, much like they would have if the world hadn't ended. Bedtime stories, family game time, as set a schedule as we can manage."

It's not like Shane's never followed a little kid's routine before. He's been babysitting Carl for overnight visits since the kid could walk and gave up the bottle.

"You think the older kids won't rebel at being read stories?" Sophia more often than not reads to Shane anything she finds intriguing, not the other way around.

"I think they'll enjoy it. They might still read on their own or other activities after the younger ones go to sleep, but I suspect if you offer, your audience will number at least four. More when Morgan is away."

"Okay. It can't hurt to try. And all the other sitcom stuff, too." Hell, half the reason he hung out at Rick's as an adult was to enjoy the sometimes almost scripted American family routine Rick and Lori implemented around Carl. It wasn't how his childhood went, with a single working mother.

Michonne smiles. "Merle's told me how Sophia used to be a little wallflower before. You just need to help them bloom the same way you did her, but Molly proved my prediction tonight. In distress, her safety net was coming to you, not me."

He thinks of Molly's fragile little frame, so much smaller than Sophia, and still far too light for her age. It's hard to remember Carl that small, probably because he was so full of energy at that age. But once she knew for certain he wasn't upset, she curled into him like there was nowhere safer in the world. It reminds him of that night weeks ago, when Sophia cried herself to sleep on his shoulder in the car, even after he told her the sins that made him a poor guardian.

Shane doesn't intend to tell the younger children his past, not anytime soon. Patrick, perhaps.

"I can't help but think it's a sign of the world gone crazy, with me raising kids like them. Before, I never wanted to be a dad, you know."

"Many people don't feel a pressing need to become parents until after it happens to them. Maybe in the old world you would have remained content with being an occasional uncle. Or maybe you just never let yourself believe you deserved it."

Michonne steps closer, her dreads hidden under the colorful silk she sheathes them in at night. It makes her smile stand out more, even when it's a slow one, more assessing than reassuring.

"We haven't spoken directly of the family you're missing, Shane, but what came before doesn't disqualify you from being able to love those kids. It certainly won't stop them from loving you."

"They'll never be my family again, Michonne, not after what I've done. Even if Merle finds them all alive and well tomorrow, I can't ask for forgiveness." His voice cracks under the strain to not raise it in protest. 

"I was a monster who treated my best friend's wife as if she were a possession to keep, especially after I heard about the baby. I was willing to steal Carl from his own father." The pain in his chest and his throat feels like it'll strangle him as he moves to his worst crime. "I tried to make my brother kill me because I was too much of a damned coward to do it myself."

That hand is back, but this time, Michonne deliberately places her palm against the gnarled flesh. He tries to back up, but there's nowhere to go as his thighs contact the bedside table.

"This," she presses firmly against the scars, "does not define everything that you are, anymore than scars on your wrists would. You need to remember that you weren't the only one to blame in all that happened. There's no way it happened in a vacuum of only your choices."

"Mine were the worst ones."

"Not all of them. You didn't have to save Sophia. After you did, you could have brought her to Morgan and left her with hooes he might reunite with your wayward partner eventually. You didn't have to keep taking in strays into your home."

"You're naming things I've done to atone for my mistakes."

"Perhaps. But people don't change their entire personality to atone for sins, Shane. The caretaker and protector these kids need you to be, the father figure Sophia already loves? That's who you already were." Michonne lets her hand fall away from his chest, and he feels a little bereft.

"Only because I had to keep Lori and Carl safe. Once I lost them, I lost it."

"Grief is a powerful, mind altering emotion, and you've been suffering under its weight since before the world fell. Admitting you have a right to grieve is how you let go. Will your family forgive you if we ever find them? Perhaps not, and it's their right not to. But if you don't forgive yourself, you'll never heal enough for them to see you've changed."

"I don't know how." He hasn't cried since that night in the woods. It feels selfish and his life devolved due to selfish disregard of his family. But he wants to now. "I couldn't be patient and let Rick adjust and learn the world and how to forgive me for Lori."

"Shane? It's alright to be angry with them, you know. With her, especially. You weren't the only one making mistakes, and her insistence on keeping your child and Carl from you? That's selfish. She didn't do it because it was safer for the children. She did it to try to hide from her own guilt."

He shakes his head. "Being angry took me apart before. I lost everything good by being nothing but angry. I can't do that again."

"I won't push, not tonight, but we're going to keep talking about this until it isn't festering and convincing you that you're less than a good man."

"Why?" He searches her face, desperately trying to understand why she is pushing.

"Because we live in a world where being good isn't as easy as it once was. You're my friend, and I don't intend to watch you walk back into the darkness alone."

Shane swallows hard, still against the bedside table even though she's given him space now.

"Sleep on it for now. Trust my judgement. Trust Sophia's and Morgan's and everyone else's here." Michonne makes her way to the door. "This is your second chance. Make it worth it."

Then she's gone, leaving his door open so he can hear the kids in the night. It takes him a while to move and climb into bed. He feels exhausted, as he always does after the subject of the Grimes comes up, whether verbally or only in his mind.

He doesn't understand her insistence on him viewing himself as a good man, not at all. But the wounded part of him that threw away his family in anger and pride and hurt wants so badly to believe she's right.

If Shane falls asleep with a pillowcase damp with something other than sweat, that's between him and the quiet of the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I tagged it, but I suspect y'all can figure out the pairing for this story by now even if I didn't.
> 
> I'm posting this as a midweek progression to keep this story from getting too far ahead of the other, and also because the children's recovery needs a bit more than weekly time jumps as they become a family.
> 
> Still aiming for Halloweenish for Daryl to find one of the signs and notes, but Furnished will get a supplementary chapter too before we move forward to expand upon some foggy areas for its last chapter.


	21. Something He Can Solve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Merle and Morgan find another refugee from the farm in a cabin with a goat and a Buddhist.

**October 12, 2010**

Shane’s in the water with all the kids, including Andre, when Michonne makes her way down to the dock. She sits, pulling off her boots and socks, and dangles her feet in the water. Andre dog paddles his way over to her, taking in a mouthful of lake water as he tries to demand she look at him swim.

Shane catches him and lifts him up so he can talk to his mother, grinning at the wriggly little boy.

“No jacket, Mama. No floaties! I’m big!”

Michonne laughs and reaches out to cup Andre’s cheek. “I see that. You’re swimming like a fish.”

The toddler makes an exasperated sound. “No, Mama. Fish swim under the water. I swim on top.”

She tilts her head thoughtfully. “Does that make you an otter or a gator then?”

“Oh Lord.” The boy’s sudden snapping of teeth answers the question, and Shane barely keeps hold of him. “Now you got him started.”

Michonne just smirks at him. He turns Andre loose to let him swim around the dock like he’s been dog paddling. He moved both of the boats to one side of the dock, giving Andre a little manmade cove between bank, dock, and Shane’s sheltering bulk. Beyond them, the older kids are padding with a combination of kick boards and a giant, obnoxiously pink inflatable flamingo that Merle brought back on a lark.

The three newest kids are all strong swimmers, even little Luke, but Sophia is still cautious about her newly acquired skill. Steady encouragement from Duane got her confident in the days before there were six kids to supervise in the water, but Shane’s proud that she caught on so quickly. 

He’s going to be more than a little sad that they can’t take these little jaunts much longer. October’s hanging in as a fairly warm month so far, but he knows how the weather goes. Eventually, a cold front will hit, and that’ll be that for the lake until April, at least.

“You gonna swim with us?” Shane eyes Michonne’s capris and loose T-shirt, but doesn’t see the telltale signs of a swim top above her shirt. She doesn’t join in the swimming often, so he isn’t surprised.

“No. I just wanted to give you a heads up that Merle and Morgan are on their way back, and they aren’t coming alone.”

Shane freezes, one hand going to his chest without him wanting it too.

She leans out to tug his hand away, shaking her head gently. “Not Rick or his people.”

“Then who?” He’s trying to think why Michonne would think he needs a warning that Merle’s bringing in refugees. They’ve all four agreed that if someone passes the well-honed bullshit meter that the two men have, Morgan and Merle can bring survivors back without involving Michonne and Shane.

“Andrea.”

Oh. Shane wracks his brain, trying to remember if anywhere in his tale to the two men the night he confessed all, he detailed anything about the half-formed plans Andrea made to try to get him to leave with her. There’s a part of him that wonders if everyone would have been better off if he listened to the blonde and left the farm.

But if he had, the odds they would have stumbled across Sophia are negligible. There’s no way the refugees from the farm found that cabin, because he can’t picture Daryl and Carol not following the trail of clues if the group found that first note he wrote at the cabin. As guilty as it makes him feel, if it required that night in the field to get him on the path to Sophia, he would make the same choice.

“She a good one or a bad one?” Michonne asks, frowning. “Merle didn’t seem perturbed by her.”

Shane snorts. “Merle used to call her sugar tits and accuse her of being a lesbian using the most derogatory language he could. I doubt Andrea can phase him at all.”

“Christ. He toned down the crazy so fast with me that it’s hard to remember the first few days when he was still half-delirious and had no filter.”

“I’m sure most of that isn’t repeatable even in impolite company.”

“He learned his lesson.” There’s a quality to Michonne’s smile that makes Shane curious on how she tamed the big redneck, but he doesn’t ask. One day, maybe.

“As for Andrea, she’s a decent woman. A little more opinionated than most find appealing.” He checks on the kids, finding them all content and safe. “We had a bit of a thing, toward the end. She wanted me to leave with her, strike out on our own without the illusion that the world was going to return to normal that the others wanted to believe in.”

“So she’s a realist?”

“More or less, yeah. Not as much at first. Used to bitch about divisions of labor, but didn’t offer to learn anything useful aside from the laundry and such she hated. Came around after her sister died.”

“That would be a world changer for many.” Michonne nudges him, bare toes against his ribs. “This thing you two had. That going to be a problem?”

The question startles him, and he studies her intently. “If you mean like with Lori, no. It was just two people needing to blow off steam. It’s not something I intend to resurrect. The kids don’t need the drama, and she’s definitely not much into kids.”

Michonne’s smile reaches her eyes as she nudges him again with her foot. “See? I told you the other night that you had the instincts for being a dad. You already acknowledge the kids as a factor in getting laid or not.”

He catches her foot and curls his fingers to tickle the arch. It gets him a firm push backwards in the water. “Don’t worry about me, Michonne. I buried the womanizer in the field I nearly died in, I promise.”

Andre paddles back to the dock, wanting out of the water, and Shane lifts him up to his mother. “Gonna go further out with the other kids before I send them back to shore to wash up. Merle say when they were getting in?”

“Anytime now, actually. They were having some interference with signal, but they’ll check it out later to see what’s blocking them.” When he moves toward the dock, she shakes her head. “Let me handle the culture shock moments. Spend time with the kids.”

“Was she on her own?” Shane guesses she got separated from the rest the same as he did in the chaos of the herd swarming the farm.

“Nah. Got some psychiatrist fellow that holed up in a cabin in the woods following some Buddhist creed. Morgan convinced him to come back with Andrea after his pet goat nearly got turned into walker chow.”

“More goats? The kids will be thrilled.”

Michonne just laughs, snagging her boots and socks with one hand and lifting Andre to a hip. “At least they won’t have to name this one, if we’re lucky.”

She heads up the incline to the house, even as Shane hears the gate mechanisms. He resists the urge to call the kids in early and leave the water. Like Michonne said, time enough for Michonne to make the introductions. Out of everyone left on the farm, Andrea’s the one that worries Shane the least about upsetting the life he’s dragging back out of the ashes piece by piece.

When he does make it back to the house, organizing swimsuit clad kids through the outdoor shower one after another to rinse off the lake water and sunscreen, he can see Andrea standing on the porch, looking down. He doesn’t acknowledge her, concentrating on the kids. His skin crawls with apprehension of this major piece of the worst period of his life returning.

Shane steps into the shower himself, letting the water rinse the lake from his skin and swim trunks. He hesitates at the cabinet where spare clothes are kept, staring at the small pile of plain undershirts. Taking Michonne’s advice not to hide the scar from his family is one thing. 

Andrea isn’t family.

He pulls on a shirt, glad that they stock the largest size needed to fit any of the three men. The white cotton fabric hangs just a little loose. He’s building back some of the mass he lost when he was sick, but not at the driven level he would have in his deputy days. 

When he reaches the porch nearest the living room entrance, the blonde is waiting on him, but she seems pensive, none of the usual backbone of piss and vinegar animating her. The kids were all sent up the stairs on the bedroom side, not questioning the diversion since they need to shower.

“It was easy to forget on the farm, just how good you are with kids.”

Of all the things he expected her to say, that wasn’t it. But she’s been here for half an hour, so she had plenty of time to observe him and the kids on the lake. It earns her a hesitant smile.

“Didn’t do much to keep ahead of Carl at the farm, I admit.” No one did. It’s a wonder the kid didn’t pull up stakes and set off on his own, with his parents and Shane caught up in their own drama. He did in a way, because Shane’s blood still runs cold from remembering Carl’s confession about wandering into the woods with the gun and encountering the walker.

“I don’t think anyone did, once he got out of that bed and looked healthy.” She turns a glass in her hands and sits at the little patio table Sophia set up near the grill. “Merle didn’t fill me in on much after the farm fell. Said it wasn’t his piece to speak.”

Shane leans against the railing, not willing to sit down and consider this a mundane conversation. “How did you get separated? Do you know who made it off?”

She frowns a little, but shrugs. “Most of us were at the house when it started. The plan was to draw off as many as we could in the cars. Glenn and Maggie were in one, me and T-Dog in another. Jimmy took the RV to the barn where Rick and Carl were, but he got swarmed. Barn was on fire.”

She takes a drink of her tea, finger trailing in the condensation. “We didn’t have enough ammo. We circled back to get the others. Walkers got Patricia. T-Dog got Lori and Beth into the truck, but when I tried to help Carol, we got cut off. I guess they thought I was dead, because a walker fell on me after I killed it. I hope they thought I was dead, because they left me.”

Her eyes are glassy with tears. “Where were you? Daryl and Glenn found Randall as a walker.”

Shane picks at the hem of his shirt, taking a deep breath. “Lying under a walker wishing I would bleed to death.”

“Oh.” She scans his form, and he makes no move to explain further. Not yet. “I saw Rick and Carl. They were alive, and they took Hershel with them. They didn’t hear me beg them to stop. I heard the motorcycle, toward the end, when I fled into the woods, so I’m guessing Daryl survived.”

“And Carol?” Jesus Christ, for Sophia’s sake, he hopes Carol managed to get in a car somehow, somewhere, not left behind like Andrea. She isn’t as resourceful as the blonde.

“I have no idea.”

“Dammit.”

“Why is Carol so important?”

Shane looks at Andrea and manages a rueful smile. “Because I found Sophia. She’s alive, despite me being the biggest asshole on the planet about the odds she would survive.”

“Holy shit? She’s really alive? She’s here?” The tears that threatened earlier spill over for Andrea, and Shane understands. Finding kids alive out there? It’s a special kind of miracle. He can see her skimming over the kids she watched come up from the lake. “Oh God. I didn’t recognize her at all.”

“She’s not the kid we lost in the woods anymore, that’s for sure.” 

“Wow. Daryl was the last to leave. Hopefully he stuck around because he was looking for Carol and actually found her. No one else he would have lingered for, you know that.”

“Yeah. That’s what I told her. I remember hearing the motorcycle, before I got enough of me back together to get up and run.” His memories are so foggy about that night, especially months later, but the sound of that damned Triumph still rings clear.

“Merle said he and the other man were looking for them. Why aren’t you?”

That’s when he finally takes a seat, knowing Michonne will keep the kids inside and away from this discussion. Confessing what he did takes so few words, but it’s just as raw as it was with Merle and Morgan. There’s not as much to tell, because Andrea knows everything up until his plan to drag Randall into the woods.

She doesn’t speak right away, and he finally raises his head from where he directed every incriminating word toward the mesh of the patio table. Andrea doesn’t look horrified, and she isn’t recoiling away.

Instead she reaches across the table and places a thin hand over his. “For what it’s worth, Shane, I’m glad you didn’t succeed in that field.”

He doesn’t pull away, not right away, because he thinks the touch is about comforting herself even more than him.

“Most days, so am I.”

There will always be the bad days. He knows that. He’s snuck enough enough of Sophia’s books and read the psychology sections to wrap his mind around the damage done.

“Maybe there’s a reason Merle found me.” That makes him pull his hand away, leaning back, and she smiles sadly. “Not me, personally, Shane. When I was running through the woods, I found someone too. Instead of being a lost lamb, I found a man with a staff, who bashed in the heads of the walkers on my heels like they were summer cantaloupes.” 

“Michonne mentioned a psychiatrist. I figured it was a hint.”

Andrea laughs, curling her hand back around her glass when he remains out of reach.

“He’s a good man, but it won’t be just the classic head shrinker talk, all high and mighty. It’s his story to tell, but Eastman? He knows what lines you crossed, Shane. Intimately, and not just because he worked with prisoners before.”

Shane wonders if anyone here over the age of twelve hasn’t crossed those lines. He doesn’t want to ask Andrea. She hadn’t, back at the farm, but he knows she’s capable, if she had to.

“I guess I’ll sit down and see what he can make of me, if he’s willing.” Sophia might duct tape him to a chair if he refused. He’s seen the girl studying those same psychology chapters, that worried little furrow between her brows aimed his way when she thinks he isn’t looking. She isn’t scared of him, he knows that. 

But scared for him? That’s something maybe he can solve.

And God knows every kid in the house older than three needs someone skilled in mind healing in ways he and the other adults aren’t. No more groping around in the dark hoping they don’t trip a mine of horror and anxiety for the kids.

“Let’s go inside. Let Fee see that someone else made it off the farm.” He rises, pitching his voice lower, just in case. “Please don’t tell her you aren’t sure about her mama. Not til we know for sure.”

Andrea studies him intently, something of the lawyer she once was rising into her expression. “I can do that. No sense in making her lose hope.”

“Thank you.”

She darts curious, intent glances his way as she passes him toward the door, but doesn’t say anymore before she steps inside.

Shane takes a deep breath. In a way, Andrea was the first big test, in a way Merle was not, a piece of his bloodsoaked past wandering in for shelter. It doesn’t scare him as much as it once did.

They’ll be fine, and if Andrea survived, on foot and out of ammo, then there’s always hope that the rest did as well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now, all the appropriate people I wanted in place before the reunion have wandered into a chapter (even if Eastman's out of sight still).
> 
> Going by the film location map for the series, ironically, Eastman's cabin is not terribly far south from where Daryl & co met Aaron & co. These folks are all wandering _so_ close to each other but just missing.
> 
> The next chapter in Hell is Furnished, Daryl will find the first of the clues... 
> 
> ~*~*~  
> On a personal note, this isn't a Merle chapter or even a story focused on him, but I know a lot of folks subscribed cross over all my stories.
> 
> A lot of the good and bad I use to characterize Merle... it comes from how I viewed my biological father at various stages of my life. He grew up in a truly horrific situation and struggled his entire life with the consequences of that. Drugs (using, dealing, manufacturing), poor decisions in the women in his life, a jaunt through state prison... He was one of the smartest people I've ever met, but his life was clouded so completely by drugs that it's hard to say who he really was.
> 
> But at his core, he was a good man, just a very broken one. He didn't know how to be a father, but he loved me and he _tried_ when his mind and addictions allowed him to. He passed away yesterday evening, due to renal failure after an E coli infection and pneumonia complications. It is a complex situation, because we were in the stage of not talking due to his addiction issues. I don't regret the distance, because my own mental health required me not to be involved with an active addict, and he never begrudged me that priority. 
> 
> But now there are no more possibilities.
> 
> Revising Merle feels like a fix it he could never have. I suppose I will keep saving Merle with tiny bits of my father spun into him like Easter eggs... Ironically, I think my father would enjoy the idea. In his sober periods, he loved my writing, and Merle is the kind of character - redneck, tattooed, biker, abuse survivor, struggling with addiction, military vet - that always appealed to him (although the racism was never a flaw my father shared). 
> 
> You may get chapter upon chapter. I may not be able to conquer words for where I want the stories to go and go radio silent a while. I just don't know. ~DT~


	22. Ready One Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shane's session with Eastman leads him to a realization about his relationship with Michonne.

** October 14, 2010 **

Shane's rarely alone these days, and today isn't really an exception. The older children are all next door, putting together a separate coop and enclosed pen for the trio of turkeys Merle and Morgan rescued yesterday. As much as they all like the idea of free range poultry, hawks in the area have taken notice of the growing numbers of chickens next door.

He is down at the smokehouse he built based on plans Sophia found in one of her pilfered library books. It's a little more high tech than the ancestral ones seen in books and movies, but Shane thinks they'll be better off for it. The main addition he made is the outdoor kitchen, which is why he built everything above the highest flood line.

Today it's him and Andre, because Michonne is busy running the big pressure canner and the toddler wanted to go outside. He's playing in the sandbox nearby, happily trundling small dump trucks and other construction toys around the sand. It's Andre who alerts him to someone approaching, because he leaves the sandbox to wrap one small arm around Shane's left knee.

"Michonne indicated you might be willing to walk me through the process," Eastman says as he gets within earshot.

"Of smoking meats or cleaning fish?" Shane doesn't pause in his filet work, finishing another fish and dropping it into the brine mixture in the big stainless steel pot.

"Both, although I suspect I've missed several steps with the catfish."

Shane chuckles. "Yeah, they're already naked and headless." When he and Sophia did the run around the trotlines this morning, she helped him skin and behead the fish, leaving the filleting for later. "Aren't you a vegetarian?"

"For my personal dietary needs, yes, but I don't feel the need to impose that philosophy on others. Nutritionally, I'm not sure I would recommend it in our world of limited resources for the children."

"Still developing brains and bodies need protein, right?"

"Yes. And it is not like any of the animals here are living in substandard accommodations. So long as no one tries to eat Tabitha, I'm good."

Shane laughs, dropping another filet into the brine. "I don't see goat going on the menu soon, especially not a milk goat who provides a daily alternative to becoming barbeque."

"What is the process here? I understand the basics of the smokehouse, but the outdoor kitchen baffles me a bit."

"According to the books we have, the safest way of preserving meat is brining and then cold smoking. The brined meat has to be kept cool, thus the refrigerator as part of the process. I figured as long as we have electricity, we might as well take the extra step."

He added a separate system of extra solar panels from an RV place they scavenged before the Claimers made him wary of taking the children out and added to the number of children. These panels power only the outdoor kitchen.

"How long do they brine in the refrigerator?" Eastman looks at the industrial sized appliance curiously. It was appropriated from a local restaurant. The big double door stainless steel freezerless appliance does look out of place.

"Just about four hours for the fish. The hams vary, depending on what it's from. Pork is about a month, but venison is about two weeks. Brine varies a bit."

Eastman steps closer, peering into the pot sitting on the burner already turned off. "You aren't cooking the fish?"

"Nope. You boil the water to dissolve the salt and sugar, then cut the heat."

"I see peppercorns and something green." Eastman takes a deep breath, making a face when the fish smell overwhelms the more delicate spice he's trying to identify.

"Oregano. Several sprigs from Sophia's garden, an ounce of whole peppercorns, a cup of sugar, and two cups of salt per gallon of water. Brines several pounds of fish."

"You're preparing a lot more food than will fit in the freezers."

They have four freezers now, not counting the one attached to the house fridge. All of them are on raised platforms below the house's stilts, although only the original is enclosed. That's another project eventually. One day at a time.

"We can't rely on getting food from anywhere else, and Georgia winters are notoriously unpredictable. The manufactured canned goods won't last forever. And honestly, I would be really sad to see ham and bacon gone for good."

"You have bacon? I didn't see pigs when I helped with the animals."

"Only in the process of curing. I've been thinning a sounder of feral pigs that's set up on the other side of the lake. They don't have any real predators as adults, so that sounder may get unmanageable running unchecked."

"They aren't preyed upon by the walkers?"

Shane finishes the last filet before replying. "You've never seen feral hogs if you think human teeth are any weapon against them. The damned things would eat walkers, not the other way around."

"Wouldn't that make eating the meat problematic?"

"Pigs have always been garbage disposals, eating pretty much whatever holds still long enough. I doubt we're in any more danger from any walkers they digest than any other traces of the walkers in our environment."

"I suppose. I think I remember reading about some controversy about farmers feeding pigs infected meat to build immunity to disease, so the science is behind it."

Shane puts the lid on the bucket containing the bones to drop off on the compost they're developing off-property and washes his hands. "Hey, Andre? Want to go back to the sandbox while I finish up."

The toddler eyes Eastman for a minute before giving Shane's leg a hug and returning to the sandbox.

"If you want to open the fridge, I need to put this inside." Shane puts the lid on the pot and lifts it. The boiled water has cooled while Shane worked on the fish.

The older man opens one of the doors, stepping back for Shane to slide the pot inside the fridge. He looks over what is already inside, multiple hams set to eventually go into the smokehouse.

"I recall Little House on the Prairie used an old dead tree to smoke meat. This is more involved."

"Perhaps, but none of us want to see if we can survive botulism without a hospital."

Shane eases the concrete slab of the firebox back. It's a small structure built of firebrick that will eventually hold the fire. "Cold smoking needs to be done below seventy degrees, so it isn't something we would do year round here. Build the fire here, and the metal piping allows it to cool before it reaches the actual smokehouse."

He slides the slab back in place, leading Eastman to the smokehouse itself. The base is raised, more firebrick, topped by a cedar structure that made Merle smirk and make a smartass remark about outhouses until Sophia said he wasn't allowed any bacon. Opening the door, he motions to the grate in the floor.

"We can close the flue between the smokehouse and firebox and make it double as a hot smoker for something we want to eat right away. That's why there's a second fire pit below the smokehouse."

Shane watches as Eastman inspects the wooden dowel racks and dowels installed to hang meat and the top, and the racks below repurposed from old grills that Shane will use for bacon and fish. "Quite smart to plan ahead for year round use."

"Sophia's idea, really. She's determined to figure out every possible old skill we might revive."

Eastman looks thoughtful as he steps back, seeming to look up at the chimney, which is a twin to the one that goes with the wood stove now installed in the house's living room.

"You and Michonne have both mentioned concerns about all of the children that you wanted my input on, as a trained psychiatrist. While children are outside my normal realm of practice, I am fine with that task except for one hiccup."

"What would that be?" While they don't know Eastman, any insight into how the children are recovering and adapting is a valuable one. He's just not comfortable with the man's former profession, considering his own sins.

"In order for me to truly work with children, they have to trust me." The man's smile is meant to be reassuring, Shane supposes. "But none of those kids will even consider trusting me until you do."

Shane frowns, trying to think of how he's made the children wary of Eastman's input.

"Even the littlest one feels your discomfort with me here. Think of how Andre fled his play to cling to you when I approached."

Looking over to Andre, Shane can see that the boy is still keeping a wary eye on Eastman.

"You're saying if I don't set the example, they aren't going to talk to you."

Eastman nods, that serene expression Shane associates with the mental health profession settling on his face. "I spoke to Michonne about my concerns, and she and I had an enlightening conversation about her own unease. She suggested you have some past issues that make you equally reluctant to be psychoanalyzed."

Shane can't control the flinch, even though he doubts Michonne shared details. "Michonne is an innocent compared to what I've done."

The psychiatrist looks around the idyllic compound they've built here. "Perhaps you have made mistakes, Shane, but from the looks of your family here, I would say you're atoning in a healthier way than I did for mine. How about we take a seat, and I tell you what led me to be hiding in a cabin in the woods, alone, during the apocalypse?"

Shane unfolds a couple of camp chairs from the overhang next to the smokehouse that stores the wood intended for its use. If Eastman is willing to get personal first, Shane is willing to listen.

By the time the man finishes his tale, Shane is tense and shaking, which Andre is alert to. He has a lapful of cuddly three-year-old, who raises his head to glare at Eastman occasionally. Shane ought to send him back to his mother, but Andre resisted the idea and only calmed when Shane stopped.

"The reality of our world is that it is easy to let humanity slide in favor of survival. That ability is probably why you aren't actually insane, you know."

"It sure felt like I was for a while." Shane sighs, soothing Andre. 

"And what cleared your mind?"

"Sophia. I was the only adult she had to rely on for a while."

"And that's what keeps most people away from that edge, having those they love around them. Being needed and loved is a powerful psychological stabilizer, just as losing one's family can fracture the mind."

Shane finds himself repeating the tale he told Merle and Morgan. It's easier this time, with less feeling of being exposed to the world after a confession. He guesses it is because he's already told all this before.

The psychiatrist is quiet long enough for Shane to be concerned. Despite the man's own admission of killing a man in a rather horrific manner, the murderer was not an innocent. Not like Otis or Rick.

"There's no easy fix for what you experienced, Shane. I am no priest to grant absolution, and even those of faith rarely solve the issue in the confessional. But from what little I've witnessed here, you've laid the groundwork for a life that isn't dependent on Rick's family for your happiness."

"I could still lose Sophia, when her mama is found."

"I doubt there is any realistic scenario where that young lady will be willing to abandon you. The concern you should address is how to share her affections with her mother, should the woman survive and return. Perhaps in addition to those general psychology texts you've sampled, you might look for ones aimed at divorced parents."

"Even though Carol and I would never have that type of relationship?"

"I would venture that it would make it easier, because neither of you would have to overcome a failed personal relationship to co-parent Sophia."

Shane thinks on that and finally nods. "I guess that makes sense."

"It may never become an issue. Michonne suspects that Sophia thinks her mother didn't survive, because she lacked the skills to do so. The tricky part there is working with a child who mourned a parent, if the parent performs a Lazarus."

"Carl seemed to weather it well." At least as much as Shane was allowed to know. The boy's problems developed later, when his parents and Shane were embroiled in their sick triad.

"Every child will react differently. It will be something to monitor carefully." Eastman smiles down at the toddler in Shane's arm, now snoring softly. "What does Sophia think of your relationship with Michonne? She's the only one of the children whose place in your life predates Michonne's."

Shane's gaze snaps from Andre to Eastman. "What? Michonne and I are friends. Only friends."

"Are you absolutely certain of that? Sex isn't required for a relationship, especially not as early stage as the two of you are. Your interactions with each other indicate an ease and an interest in each other."

"I'm sure."

Although their conversation wraps with a plan for Shane to sit with each child and Eastman to help establish a rapport, the conversation about Michonne lingers beyond the reassurance about Sophia. His pensive mood draws a few concerned looks from the woman in question. She holds her peace until all the children are in bed, and Eastman and Andrea off to the camper for the night.

"You look like you could use this." Michonne passes him a warm mug, and a sip reveals it's heavily doctored with rum. She drinks from her own mug, leaning against him at the kitchen counter where he's just put away the dishes.

"Eastman thinks we're a couple." It comes out plainly, with no preamble.

"I could see where he might deduct that." She bumps her hip into his. "We're raising children together, we live in the same house, and I certainly flirt with you enough to give that impression."

Shane turns to stare at her. "We've been flirting?"

"Less we, more me." She smiles, mischief evident in her expression. "You tend to be as oblivious as the unaware best friend in a romcom."

"Oh." Shane blinks and settles for a drink of the hot cocoa to buy time to answer.

"It's not a commitment, Shane, just a series of hints that I would welcome your attention when you reach a point you feel able to give it."

She doesn't seem offended when he doesn't reply. Instead, she stays leaned almost against him at the counter while they finish their cocoa. He can feel the heat of her skin against his, and he realizes she touches him often. It's just drifted under the children's need for physical affection. Although come to think of it, even Morgan and Merle don't shy away from the occasional hand on a shoulder.

Shane lets her take his mug when it's empty, watching as she goes through the motions of washing the mugs and sauce pot. When she turns back to him, he manages a reply. "I'm not ready yet."

In the past, he's gotten over the rare woman who got under his skin by moving on to one who absolutely wouldn't have long-term appeal. It's the habit he followed by accepting the crude invitation Andrea issues in the car that day.

Michonne isn't someone he could ever think of like that, and there's not enough of him whole yet to consider what she deserves.

She smiles, reaching out to cup his face between her hands. It's warm and comforting, making him want to lean into the touch. He gives into the temptation for a few heartbeats. 

"There's no deadline for you to be ready," she says softly. 

The hug she gives him makes him feel for the first time that he might be one day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A tidbit to connect a few dots before the reunion upends everything and rearranges relationships.
> 
> The next Furnished chapter will probably come after the next RBM/ISO dual chapters.


	23. Reunion, Part 2 of 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trying to fill in the blanks of Sophia's time away from her mother over supper turns disastrous when Carol mentions leaving King County.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In order for readers to keep up with the flow of the Reunion arc, I'm going to label them in the correct order, despite being on alternating stories. So yesterday's chapter of _Furnished_ will be Reunion, Part 1, and the rest will be labeled as a guide. I'll keep alternating chapters until Reunion is concluded.

**October 15, 2010**

Despite the warning Morgan delivered, Shane isn’t really prepared for the shock of seeing Sophia wrapped in her mother’s arms. It’s the day he’s both dreaded and hoped for, because the longer Carol was absent, the more he began to think he gave Sophia false hope that Daryl would keep the woman alive. But here they are, and he can’t see much of Carol because Sophia’s growth spurt puts the girl at her mother’s height, and steady work with Michonne in martial arts has been putting muscle mass on her, too.

Daryl Dixon, however, he’s got a clear view on, and he can see the moment when the pin drops for the other man. While recent contact with Merle disabused him of the idea that Merle fried any brain cells he once had, he’s never been able to completely bury the instinctive reaction that Daryl’s native intelligence is probably shrewder than his own. The man’s broad shoulders shift, but before he can make any move, Shane feels a heavy arm drop across his shoulders.

“Now, baby brother, whatever thought is in your pretty little head right now, you best drop it right now.” Merle’s voice shifts from irreverent to stern paternal by the end of the sentence, and the effect on Daryl is instantaneous. 

The hunter flicks his gaze between Merle’s face and the arm around Shane’s shoulders, reading exactly the message Shane knows Merle’s sending. He sure as hell didn’t expect the big redneck to make an open declaration of whatever this is: brotherhood, protectiveness, whatever. But the second Sophia squirms free of her mother’s embrace to look at what has Merle riled up, he makes the connection.

Merle and Shane have the solid beginnings of a friendship between them, but Merle Dixon _adores_ Sophia.

Sophia’s eyes widen, and she backs up a couple of steps, her own chin coming up stubbornly as she deliberately steps in front of him, and Shane thanks instinct that has him reaching for her elbow nearest her belt knife and gun. She did pull a gun on Merle once to protect him, after all.

“Let’s not add both Dixons to your list of people you’ve threatened to shoot, Fee,” he says softly.

She relaxes into the touch, letting her attention drift back to her mother. Carol’s watching the interplay, tears still evident on her face. Once the woman’s gaze falls on the protective hand at Sophia’s elbow and back to Merle’s arm on Shane’s shoulders, something clicks for her. She’s not as gentle when she wraps a hand around Daryl’s right bicep, but the intent is the same.

“I think maybe we have a lot of stories to exchange,” Michonne says, smiling to diffuse the situation. She’s scooped up Andre, who is responding to the ebb and flow of tense emotions among the adults. He looks near tears, his face half-buried in his mother’s shoulder. “No sense in frightening the children any more, all of you.”

There’s steel in the woman’s voice that draws Carol’s attention to her. “I would very much like to hear everything,” she says, voice husky from the tears she shed on reuniting with her daughter.

“Let’s head upstairs. I’ve got enough food for three extra, but y’all might want first dibs at it.”

It takes Shane’s very soft spoken, “Fee, take your mama upstairs and show her around,” to get Sophia to stop eying Daryl like he’s the antichrist.

She offers her mother her hand, finally deeming to notice the third visitor, but he doesn’t seem to raise her hackles the way Daryl did inadvertently. Shane never thought to really prepare her that most reactions to him are going to be exactly like Daryl’s. She knows what he did, almost all of it, but that’s different than living through it.

“Anyone sent word next door that we’ve got visitors?” he asks Michonne. Andrea and Eastman are normally back by dark, but he can’t imagine either the feisty blonde or the psychiatrist not being present for a reunion like this.

“Elwood said they were almost finished repairing that coop the raccoons tried to dismantle and to not wait supper on them.” Michonne motions toward the stairs, although she eyes the third visitor as Sophia leads Carol upstairs. “The other two don’t need an introduction, I suppose, but you don’t match any of the descriptions I’ve heard from these two.”

The bearded man smiles and offers a hand to Michonne. “Paul Rovia. My people only recently crossed paths with Daryl and Carol, and I came with them today to show them where we found Sophia’s notes.”

Michonne takes the hand and somehow gets the man to follow her upstairs, skillfully leaving just Shane and the two Dixons.

Merle waits until they’re out of sight to drop his arm from Shane’s shoulders. “Now, baby brother, reality is like this. You’re gonna hold your horses until you’ve got all the facts, not just the ones spoonfed to you by that pansyass Officer Friendly, or I’ll put you back on the other side of the fence my own self. You got that?”

There’s no room for argument in Merle’s tone or body language. Shane believes him at this point, that he would honestly evict his brother off the property if he won’t follow the rules Merle’s setting down.

Daryl nods, still watching Shane through narrowed eyes. “Guess I don’t have much choice, do I?”

“That does seem to be the situation.” Merle scratches at his scruffy chin and allows his body language to relax, flowing from ex-Marine to relaxed redneck with the motion. “Now get your skinny ass upstairs before Chonne takes offense you aren’t eager for the food she’s putting in front of you.”

Shane decides to provide the example, even though turning his back to Daryl with so much left unexplained makes his skin crawl. He’s halfway up the stairs when he hears boots hit the bottom step and does his best not to look back to see if it’s Merle or Daryl. He sidesteps some of the issue of speaking to their visitors by going to pull the card table out of where they have it stored behind his dresser, snagging two of the folding chairs in his other hand.

Michonne’s finishing up supper, keeping a careful eye on where Sophia’s got all their visitors on the barstools, chattering at her mother about the raised bed garden now enclosed as a mini-greenhouse thanks to Morgan.

“We’ll have tomatoes all winter, Mama, from plants I grew all by myself, starting in about a month. I had to have help to build the beds and haul all the soil up here, but that was my project to start with. It’s got lights too, so I can show you, after supper.”

“It’s not just tomatoes,” Shane says, drawing attention to where he’s setting up the folding card table. “She’s got beds going of field peas, turnips, and winter squash too, before she snuck those tomatoes in to get a head start after Morgan helped her put up the greenhouse walls.” The peas and turnips will harvest in early November, and Sophia already has replacements planned for their spaces. The squash will take longer, but they’ll be eating it by Christmas for sure.

Carol ventures a smile at that. “It sounds like you’ve been busy, sweetheart.”

“We’re always busy here, Mama. Lots of ideas to get going because nobody wants to eat out of cans all the time, especially since they don’t last forever. We started out with Miss Gloria’s garden, but then we replanted according to her chart for winter vegetables, and she had lots of books and notes about gardening and canning.”

Shane misses a section of conversation when he retrieves the other two folding chairs. It’s a tricky fit, tucking the card table up close to the pantry so that Michonne and Sophia can move around if needed. But they’ve overflowed the table and bar capacity already without the visitors, although Andrea and Eastman running late will help. Those two will just have to take their supper in the living room or out to the deck.

He honestly considers whether he could pull off sitting with the kids at the card table without looking like an idiot, but even if Michonne would let him try it, Sophia wouldn’t.

“Help with the silverware, Fee?” Shane asks out of old habit. He ignores the looks from Carol and Daryl at that. Carol’s is just carefully assessing, but Daryl’s is laced with that edge of hostility that brings Shane back to the quarry and his early dealings with the Dixons.

Sophia slides the drawer open, scooping out silverware by the handful even as Shane sets a stack of plates on the counter for Michonne. With this many people, it’ll just be faster to serve up the plates instead of a parade of folks through the kitchen.

“How many people live here?” Carol asks her daughter as Sophia sets out forks or spoons, depending on the age of the intended. 

“Twelve right now. Six kids, six adults.”

“All in the one house?”

“Mostly. We set up a camper for Merle, but he keeps sleeping on the couch anyway, so we gave it to Mister Eastman and Miss Harrison when Merle and Morgan found them three days ago. He likes animals so much he brought a goat along.” Remembering Eastman’s vegetarianism, Sophia flits a comment to Michonne. “We did make him something that wasn’t venison, right?”

Michonne laughs and points to a foil tented plate that is separate from the ones that hold the venison tenderloin steaks. “Just because you were out and about today, missy, doesn’t mean I forgot what people can and can’t eat.”

Sophia turns back to her mother. “Mister Eastman is a vegetarian, but he won’t mind that the rest of us are eating Bambi.” She grins as she moves to start filling glasses with tea. “And I shot the Bambi we’re eating tonight.”

Since Carol and Daryl both look clean and well-fed, Shane supposes wherever they’ve been holed up at, it’s safe and no one’s going hungry. That’s been a worry in the back of his mind, especially as they build up their stocks far beyond what those residing here can use. He hopes it means that Lori and Carl are safe, and Rick, but he can’t bring himself to feel he has the right to ask about them.

“You’ve been hunting?” Carol looks intrigued, but not upset by the idea.

“Yeah. Just deer though. Shane won’t take me along when he hunts the feral hogs. Says they’re too dangerous for a novice hunter.”

Further hunting discussion is interrupted by Michonne, who directs them to get the plates all on the table. She points the three visitors to sit at the table as Morgan troops up with the rest of the kids. They all have the fresh scrubbed look of having used the outdoor sink, and Shane appreciates that Morgan sent them up the backstairs when Molly and Luke both freeze at the sight of newcomers. Neither kid has warmed to Eastman yet, although they’re plenty friendly with Andrea.

Morgan smiles and leans in. “I’ll sit with the youngest kids. Let Patrick and Duane go out to the patio table.”

The two older boys are more than happy to take their meals outside, although Duane looks endlessly curious during the brief introduction all the children are given for their visitors. The search for Carol has taken his father off property so much that Shane’s not a bit surprised the boy would be interested now that she’s appeared.

Sophia motions for Shane to take the seat next to her, putting him on one end of the table. Her mother is next to her, with Daryl looking uncomfortable in the other end seat. Paul declines the table, telling Merle this sounds like a family discussion, and takes a seat at the bar. It leaves Merle and Michonne to take the other seats, once Michonne is assured Andre will eat his supper sitting with Morgan.

His discomfort must show, because Michonne hooks a foot around the back of his ankle, the comforting touch hidden by the table. Merle settles his uncovered stump on the table closest to Daryl with a deliberateness that tells Shane he’s reminding his brother of how they came to be separated. With Duane outside, saying grace slips by, everyone too caught up in the tension of the newcomers and everything still left untold.

Shane clears his throat, knowing he isn’t going to enjoy the meal until he says his piece. “Night the farm fell, walkers were all being drawn toward the barn fire. I just kept going in the opposite direction until I couldn’t make it any further. Found a cabin south of Sharpsburg. Wasn’t in the best shape and probably wouldn’t have lasted more than a few hours longer if Sophia didn’t pop out of that place and drag me inside to safety. She patched me up, said she’d been there for over a week.”

Sophia takes up the tale, laying her fork down next to her plate with only her asparagus touched so far. “The first night I was lost, I slept in a house. Shane says you found that place, Mister Daryl, with the pantry?”

Daryl nods, eating methodically the same way Merle does, which Shane knows now is from going hungry as a kid. They eat whatever they can, when they can. “With the sardine cans.”

“Yeah. They tasted really nasty, but I was hungry. I took some boy’s clothes because I got all scratched up with what I was wearing. There wasn’t any food or water really after that, so I couldn’t stay. The next night, I found a tree I could climb. I was real hungry by then, but the only thing I found were mushrooms that didn’t look like what Shane said was safe at the quarry. Then I found a shed to hide in, and the place had a well so I got something to drink.”

She pauses, taking her mother’s hand when Carol reaches for her. “Then I found the cabin. There was a lot of camp food, like Ed’s MREs, and a little hand pump inside the cabin and a camp toilet so I didn’t really have to go outside. I stayed put there, hoping someone would find me instead of me keeping wandering. It was a good thing too, when I found out just how far I went in the wrong direction.”

“Was that near that peanut farm you left the note on?” Carol asks.

“Yeah. We followed a trail out of the woods from the cabin and found the farm. That poor lady was bumping around inside, so Shane taught me how to take care of walkers. We found a car there, so we weren’t walking after that, at least.”

None of the visitors seem outraged that he taught Sophia to kill walkers, so at least they’re all in that level of reality. “I knew from the last conversation with Randall that his people were north of Senoia, so I hoped y’all might keep heading south to Fort Benning. Wasn’t risking crossing their path, not with me getting sicker by the hour.”

“We found the notes,” Carol says, still clinging to Sophia’s hand. “All the way down and all the way here.”

“Sorry we didn’t keep looking, but I had a hell of a fever, and the last thing I wanted was to be somewhere I didn’t know was safe. Figured with Columbus gone, y’all might circle round here, especially if y’all found the notes.”

“He almost died, Mama,” Sophia says softly. It’s both remembered emotion and trying not to let Molly and Luke hear, he thinks. “The wound in his chest got so infected, and then it spread everywhere. My book said the infected parts had to be cut away, so I did.” She favors her mother with a smile. “He got better then.”

Shane feels the mix of fear and relief and utter fucking gratitude he always does when he thinks of Sophia bravely cutting away the dead and infected flesh that nearly killed him. “She saved me,” he adds, waiting until Carol is looking at him instead of Sophia to add, “Not the other way around.”

It’s not the first time he’s found his will to live in a child who needs him as much as he needs them, but at least with Sophia, there’s no guilt or horror left. He’s made up for his disbelief that she could survive the woods.

“That sounds pretty brave,” Carol says. “You figured it out from a book?”

Merle laughs. “Spitfire’s got a whole shelf full of medical books now. Regular little Florence Nightingale. She ain’t even afraid of my stump here.”

Sophia beams happily at that, finally eating a few bites of food again. “When Shane got better, we went looking for Morgan and Duane. They came here and then Merle and Michonne found us.”

“And the other children? Do they belong to the other two people?” Carol asks, looking to where Molly and Luke are splitting their attention between the adult table and their meals.

It’s then that Shane realizes Carol must not remember Andrea’s last name, because Sophia mentioned her in that carefully formal way she reserves for adults she doesn’t trust yet. “No, but that’s a story best told another time. Little pitchers have big ears.” He cuts his eyes toward Molly and Luke.

Carol frowns and Daryl nudges her, leaning in. “Remember what Merle said about worm food?”

“Oh.” The woman’s face looks horrified, so Merle definitely mentioned the Claimers in some fashion.

“Might want to warn you about the other two, though, Carol,” Shane says, figuring it’s a bit mean not to tell the woman another of the quarry people survived. “Eastman, he’ll be new to you, but he rescued another person out of the woods after the farm fell, just like Sophia found me.”

Carol makes the connection almost instantly. “Andrea’s alive?”

Daryl muffles a curse, dropping his fork to the table. “I knew I should have gone back to look for her, dammit.”

It finally brings up what Shane wants to know, but doesn’t feel he’s got the right to ask. But Sophia’s not so shy.

“Is Carl okay? Shane says he was shot, and Andrea said she saw him get off the farm, but it’s just you two and him here.”

Daryl and Carol both startle, and Carol starts laughing just a little. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I should have told you right away. Carl’s plenty safe, back at the place where we were staying. The only people who didn’t make it off the farm were ones you hadn’t met, with Andrea being found. We can take you to see him when we leave. He’ll be so happy you’re okay.”

It’s a terribly wrong thing to say, because Sophia snatches her hand back from her mother. “No! I’m not leaving my home, not even to see Carl.”

“Sophia, this isn’t your home,” Carol starts, and that’s the girl’s limit. 

“It is so my home. I helped make it safe and grow food and learned how to hunt and fish. I’m not leaving.” She’s on her feet, putting space between herself and her mother as if Carol intends to carry her off right this second. The movement takes her around behind Shane, but she stops when she’s pressed one hip to Michonne’s shoulder, which puts three adults between her and Carol.

Merle lays his fork down with a thump. “Just what’s back there that you gotta uproot the girl?” he asks. “Sounds like a bunch of people with a history of losing members of their group like they’re feral cats they’re tired of feeding.”

“Ain’t like that,” Daryl interjects. “But there’s people depending on us to be there. People that will want to know Sophia’s alive. She’ll be safe there, just like here.”

Merle’s eyes narrow. “Pretty damned sure most of them would be just fine with being told she’s safe and sound. Never saw that any one of them was attached to the girl except the little boy. Was high at the quarry, little brother, not stupid.”

“She belongs with her mama, and they need Carol there.”

“I don’t give two shits what any of those people need. They can fucking figure it out all on their own like every other person left standing in this world. You and your lady are talking taking the girl away from where she’s safe and cared for, to be among people that include the fucking jackass that abandoned her in the first place? Bullshit.”

“Wasn’t just me he left,” Sophia says, the venom in her tone worrying Shane. “That’s what he does. I’m not going anywhere he is, and if you try to make me, Mama, I’ll just leave and come right back, even if I have to walk right across Georgia.”

Carol looks distraught, and Shane can imagine her terror at the idea of her daughter carrying through with that threat. It makes him want to find a way to lock Sophia away safely so she can’t carry out such a foolish idea. 

“They need us there,” she says softly. She looks at Shane, expression pleading. “Lori’s been really sick, and all we have is Hershel. He’s not an obstetrician, and he needs my help.”

That information tears into the as-yet-unhealed wound Shane bears regarding the baby. “That cannot be a consideration for me, Carol. It can’t be. But Sophia? Please don’t take her somewhere she’s got to live with another man she fears like she feared Ed.”

It’s a low blow, he knows, but Sophia’s shaking where she’s wedged into the space between him and Michonne, her grip on his shoulder enough to draw blood from her nails, he thinks. He promised her she would be safe, and in her mind, obviously anywhere near Rick isn’t safe.

It makes Carol cry, which brings Daryl to his feet. “Rick isn’t Ed Peletier, and you of all people got no right acting like Carol doesn’t have her kid’s best interest in mind.”

“He’s got all the right,” Sophia cries out. “You just shut up because you don’t know anything. I wish you stayed gone. Both of you.” She’s gone before Shane can catch her, boots pounding down the hall and slamming the door with enough force he hears something hit the floor in the hallway. Her CD player comes on, deliberately loud. 

Typical teenage tantrums don’t happen often with Sophia, but the once or twice she’s been mad as a hornet for a while, she likes to bury herself in music and hide from the world. The heavy metal beat that is sounding the hallway is agitated, and the lyrics of the Five Finger Death Punch song are bitterly appropriate for the moment.

“Fee’s playing her angry music,” Molly says, sounding upset.

Fuck. He knew it would be bad, when Carol finally showed, but he didn’t realize how opposed Sophia was to leaving here, not truly, until now.

“Carol, I’m sorry,” he starts, only to get a pissed “Fuck off, Walsh” from Daryl, where he’s got the woman cradled against his chest.

So he opts for the problem he can solve and heads down the hallway to try to convince Sophia they can fix this somehow without her wishing her mother lost again.

Jesus Christ, he can’t imagine how that must feel for Carol.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sophia is 13, with all the angst and temper that can entail. Faced with being removed from the first place she's felt safe in her entire life, she's going to strike out pretty viciously. It isn't that she doesn't love Carol, but she's more afraid of losing her newfound family and having to face someone who features in her nightmares more than Ed does. They'll find their middle ground, but it'll be bumpy for a bit.
> 
> The song featured in the chapter is Five Finger Death Punch's "Never Enough". Those lyrics would really resonate for a kid who grew up feeling like her opinion and effort doesn't matter much in the reality of the world.
> 
> And Merle got a lot froggier than I planned for this chapter...


	24. Reunion, Part 4 of 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sophia works through conflicting emotions about her mother's reappearance by talking things out with Shane.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sophia POV. Parts of this could be triggering with Sophia's thoughts about her parents and domestic violence in general.

** October 15, 2010 **

Sophia takes a deep breath as the third song on the CD ends. As the fourth begins, she lets Lucius go with a kiss on his furry head. The big cat stalks over to the back windows, leaping up onto the little kids' toy box and wedging himself onto the window sill of the one of the windows.

Cutting the music off, she stands, dries her face, and blows her nose before she opens the door. She can feel Shane's weight against it even as it moves, so she steps backwards. He allows himself to travel with the door, which lands him sprawled on her floor on his back. Molly and Luke giggle, sounding tired.

"Feeling better?" he asks softly, looking up at her. There's no condemnation in his expression for her temper tantrum, just concern.

"Maybe." She's still not leaving, and she meant it. Although maybe she won't walk across Georgia. He did teach her to drive, and Merle taught her how to hotwire the older vehicles.

"Molly, why don't you and Luke go help Michonne with Andre?" Shane suggests. They don't argue, but both of them step over Shane to hug Sophia tightly before heading to the bathroom where she can hear Andre splashing.

Shane looks at her for a minute before getting to his feet. He offers a hug, and she leans into his warmth, needing the comfort. She told Carl when they first met that his dad was nice, but even after she learned he wasn't Carl's dad, he acted like one. Back at the quarry, Shane was always so affectionate with Carl, as if hugs and attention were infinite things he just had to share with the boy.

She had been so jealous she could practically taste it.

"I don't want to leave here," she mutters into his chest. "This is my family."

Shane smells like everything she's come to associate with safety and home: gun oil, sawdust, the deodorant soap everyone shares, and the expensive cologne she couldn't describe until she read the box and knows it's bergamot and black currant - spicy citrus and sweet. 

She used to be a little wary of hugs, needing to be careful not to add hurt to her mother's often injured frail form. But now, she can linger, with the little kids and with Merle and Michonne. The kids are still so tiny and breakable, making her feel like Hagrid trying not to break them while she holds them close. It's a lot like hugging her mama, making her feel a desperate need to protect.

Michonne always smells of the avocado conditioner for her dreads, with a whiff of something spicy Sophia's never been able to identify. She always feels stronger than Sophia, with all the layers of muscles trained by martial arts that Sophia envies and works hard to build on herself.

Being hugged by Merle is different than Shane or Michonne, because he still sometimes avoids using his right arm. But he'll drop the left one over her shoulder and pull her close companionably, usually with some really questionable joke just clean enough to share with a kid. He always smells like Old Spice and spearmint, and the earthy scent of the oatmeal based lotion he uses in his stump. He likes to tug on what length she has to her hair and suggest a different color she should try instead of brown. Usually it's something garish, like bubblegum pink to match the Bug.

Shane's big hand brushes over her hair, settling against the nape of her neck. "We are and always will be, but she's your mama, sweetheart. She was family first."

Sophia feels her fingers fist into Shane's shirt. Seeing her mother alive today was like a miracle. Even though Shane told her Daryl was looking after Carol at that farm, she didn't quite believe her mother would really make it very long.

"He's her boyfriend," she says, leaning back enough that she can see Shane. "She was holding his hand under the table."

"That could be a good thing," Shane suggests. "He's not like Ed."

She knows that much, between the quarry and Merle's stories since he's been here. Her mother is safe with Daryl.

"It doesn't mean he's in charge of me."

She thinks Shane's tightening of his hug is probably involuntary. His gaze is as serious as she's ever seen it. "No, it doesn't, but him being with your mama is something that takes extra consideration."

She huffs a sigh, feeling the breath gust back at her from his chest. "Did you ever have to do that? With your mama?"

Shane doesn't talk a lot about his mother. When he does, it's always wistful. She died of cancer when Shane was in high school, and it seems he has an easier time talking about his Grandma Jean instead, even though she's been gone for years. Sophia guesses it's different, seeing your mother waste away for years from cancer and its treatments versus a grandmother who goes peacefully in her sleep.

"Not really. She worked so much, and then she was sick for a long time. Maybe if she had, she wouldn't have had to work so hard just to get by."

Sophia thinks about that, and how being on her own in this world was terrifying. At least Daryl is protective of her mother. That sure as hell wasn't something Ed would have done. He probably would have laughed and added to the reasons for Carol to cry and encouraged Sophia to say more mean things.

"I still don't want to leave here."

"I know, sweetheart. We've just got to find the solution. Maybe they could come here. Stay up at the big house near the gates so Rick's not around you."

The idea of the other deputy being near her makes her feel panicky and dizzy. She can almost see the woods again and hear the strange sounds around her. Shame flickers through her at how weak she was then, even wetting herself that first night in that little pantry. It makes her stomach clench, and she feels like she needs to throw up. Her fear must transfer to Shane, because she's squashed against him again.

"Okay, maybe not. Not if it scares you this bad." He kisses her on the temple. 

The gentle gesture of comfort jolts her from the worst of it. "I'm sorry," she says, recognizing her voice as the old Sophia, the weak one, and _hating_ it.

"Ain't nothing to be sorry for. To be honest, I feel the same way about seeing him, even if my reasons are different."

"Because you were trying to hurt him." She remembers the unloaded gun that first night, but she's pieced together a good enough picture of the farm from things Shane's said directly and indirectly. He isn't the only one that's read that book about mental illness he's got in his nightstand drawer.

"Yeah, I was. I did a lot of things they aren't going to want to forgive me for. Some that they shouldn't. I told you the worst, the killing I did, but not everything."

She shifts a little, and he lets her go. She doesn't want to move out of the hug, but she needs to see him clearly to ask. "Mama mentioned needing an obstetrician and Lori being sick. Is Lori pregnant?"

Maybe Carl never noticed, because he was a boy or younger or just grew up around nicer people that didn't talk about sex or affairs, but Sophia remembers that Shane and Lori were a couple before Carl's father returned. Sophia had her hand on his shoulder when her mother brought up Lori, and his body trembled like it did when he gathered Sophia up in that Claimer camp.

Shane clears his throat, looking like he's about to tell her something awfully upsetting. "She is. It was part of why Rick and I were fighting. He didn't want me to be part of the baby's life."

"It's your baby?" She isn't sure how to feel about that. It's not like Shane's all hers. She's not that selfish. But a baby is something so much different than Molly and the other kids.

"Has to be. She found out too soon after Rick came back."

Sophia thinks that over, fitting another missing puzzle piece into her mental reconstruction of what went wrong on the farm. It's not right for Shane to never see his baby. He's a good dad.

"The brick house by the main road?" she asks, thinking of the two houses closest to the road that leads from their little rambling road to the highway. One is a small, sunshine yellow painted house with two bedrooms that looks like it was built a hundred years ago. The other is a big two-story white brick place that resembles Gloria's house a little bit in its design and layout.

"Yeah. Only time you would have to be close to him would be driving by."

She thinks maybe she could live with that. It might make things better, knowing where he is, and maybe making sure he doesn't lose anyone else. She's not a little kid anymore, and people listen to her opinions now.

"Okay. Do you think Mama will be willing to come here if we tell her Mister Eastman is actually Doctor Eastman?"

The psychiatrist doesn't like his real title used, asking her to use Mister if she's insistent on good manners. It's a little weird, because he's started doing counseling sessions with all the kids, so he's not pretending he isn't one anymore. But he went over how she took care of Shane and shared how doctors have to train in a lot of areas before they specialize in one.

"That could be a selling point. We kinda reached the shouting and crying stage before we asked where they're even staying and if it is safe in the long term."

She sighs, knowing he's right there. It just made her so angry that her mother didn't listen to her or even ask what she wanted. "I've gotta apologize to them, don't I?"

"You did say something pretty cruel at the end, Fee. I'm not one to say she's your mama and that excuses everything like some do, but from what I know of Carol, she's a good woman. She just had a really shitty hand dealt to her for a long time."

Sophia sighs and fiddles with the little bear on her pillow. "We left once. Went to a shelter in Atlanta and stayed one night. I thought we were finally free of him. But he found us somehow, and she went back. It was a nice shelter, too, not like Ed always said those places would be."

When she turns, Shane's sympathetic look makes her mood shift between anxious and angry and sad all at once. She bets he knows about shelters and saw lots of families like hers. 

"I even went on the internet at school. Maybe Atlanta was too close and too many people knew where it was. But she wouldn't listen even when I gave her the address of a place in Chattanooga and another in Charleston. Ed was too lazy to go that far, I figured, and if she got a protection order, he could be arrested."

"I wish I could tell you honestly that he wouldn't have followed you that far. But if he risked going to Atlanta, he might have tried the others. And protection orders only mean the police can make an arrest." His brown eyes look haunted. "We didn't always get there in time."

That makes Sophia flinch. Ed threatened to kill her mother often enough, the last few years. She can imagine from her parents and from television why Shane looks half sick.

"At least he can't hurt her anymore," she says at last. 

"No, he cannot." He smiles a little sadly. "And I think maybe she's learned some things while you've been apart. Did you notice her holster?"

Sophia wracks her brain for a mental image of her mother and has to shake her head. Carol had a jacket on, and while she's a little disappointed she didn't follow her lessons about observation, she guesses she didn't see her mother as enough of an unknown to assess her like that.

"She's carrying a little revolver of some sort, probably a .38. I could be wrong, but I doubt Daryl would let her carry a gun she's not trained to use. Not after Andrea accidentally shot him on the farm."

"Andrea shot Daryl?" Sophia is baffled at the idea.

"He came out of the woods, wounded after a horse threw him when he was looking for you. Was in bad shape and really dirty, so he did look like a walker from a distance."

"Daryl got hurt looking for me?" The idea of it makes Sophia's feel weird. Daryl doesn't even know her, and he got hurt and shot on her behalf.

"Horse got startled by a snake and bucked him off down a ravine. One of his bolts ended up through his side. He found your doll that day and brought it back to prove you were still alive." Shane touches his head to one side. "Andrea's bullet grazed him right there."

Sophia feels herself touching the same spot. "You said once that he was the only one that never gave up."

"I don't know why he believed as strongly as he did, but he was loud and determined that you were out there still." Shane runs a hand over his hair in that way he does when he's agitated. "I was a real asshole about it, after a few days passed. Kept quoting statistics about lost kids from before."

Shane looks so guilty that Sophia just grins to reassure him, not liking him being guilty for being realistic. She's seen the news and how searches for missing kids usually happened. "So, I guess you're going to have to apologize, too."

Shane laughs and drags her into a brief, squishy hug. "You're going first, missy. Gotta show me the way."

"Guess I should get started then." She looks at the windows, where Lucius seems like he's standing guard. It just takes a few steps to verify her suspicion. She can't see everything, not without being seen herself, but she can see her mother on the little loveseat.

"My own mama always said apologies are like medicine, Fee. Best given as soon as possible." 

She giggles at the analogy and heads for the door. He lets her step by him, but surprises her when he speaks again before she's out in the hallway.

"You know I love you, right, Sophia?" It's so soft spoken she can't help but look at him. Shane looks uncertain, completely unlike the confidence she's come to expect to see. 

"I know you do." She gives him her best smile, fueled by how warm the words make her feel, like her heart is too big for her body. "I love you, too."

But she leaves it at that for now, because she has to apologize to her mother and Daryl and fix the problem that's threatening to separate her family before she can think about how good it feels to finally say that out loud.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully, this adds another layer to the reunion that airs it out a little more. It ended up better as a solely Sophia POV. We'll see Shane later on, and the actual apology/discussion with Carol seems to work better from Daryl's POV, ironically.
> 
> The book Sophia and Shane have read is _An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness_ by Kay Redfield Jamison, a psychiatrist who not only treats bipolar disorder, but also has the disorder.


	25. She Chose Well

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shane learns about Rick's breakdown from Daryl and comes to an agreement about Sophia with Carol.

**October 16, 2010**

Shane remembers the extra guests in the house when he wakes under the clinging weight of Molly. When she crept into his room and climbed up between him and Luke right at midnight, he just tucked her in and reassured Patrick on his cot at the end of the bed that everything was fine. He carefully peels away his little spider monkey and rolls her so she can use her brother as a teddy bear.

When he suggested having the boys bunk with him so that Carol and Daryl could share Sophia's room, he actually expected Molly to balk at staying. She didn't at bedtime, but he guesses in the end, having two strange people in the same room overrode the idea that Carol was Sophia's mother.

He makes a pit stop by the bathroom before making a quiet trek to the kitchen. It's his morning for breakfast, but most importantly, the coffee. Their other guest, the man who did his best to stay out of the family issues, comes alert from the sleeping bag on the floor nearest the TV. He sits up as Shane enters the kitchen, not bothering to sleep or pretend to sleep like Merle does on the couch.

After he gets the coffee started, Shane waggles a coffee cup toward Paul, who smiles but disappears down the hall while it's brewing. When he returns, Carol's behind him looking around the kitchen with more interest than she showed last night. Shane adds another cup to the two already on the counter and fills all three.

"Powdered creamer and sugar in the jars on the bar, if you need them," he says, setting his cup next to the stove to cool. Paul takes a seat at the table without adjusting his coffee, but Carol pauses to add sugar.

"Can I help with anything?"

Even though his first instinct is to say no, since she's a guest, he remembers how Carol likes to keep busy. He intended to use canned fruit for a pancake topping, but they have a ton of apples harvested from a nearby orchard.

"Basket of apples over in the corner if you're game to peel them for cinnamon apples." When Carol goes to fetch the apples, he slides a knife onto the counter even as Daryl ventures into the room.

The hunter eyes Merle and his ongoing semblance of sleep before sliding onto a bar stool next to Carol. Shane passes him a cup of coffee and sets the machine for a second pot after pouring two more. He times that just right, because Merle finally gives up the playacting and rolls to his feet with a grumble. The man half empties the cup before thunking it on the counter on the way down the hall.

"He still not a morning person?" Daryl mumbles around his cup.

Shane isn't sure if it's both Dixons who aren't, but he just chuckles. "That would be an understatement."

He starts on the pancakes, grinning as Merle returns up the hall with Luke tipped over one shoulder and Sophia trailing behind.

"Place does not have enough bathrooms," Merle grumbles, flipping Luke around and tickling him before dropping him with a thump on the couch.

"Was a single man when I bought the place, Merle. Seemed like two bathrooms was excessive back then."

Merle snorts and retrieves his cup before retreating out of Sophia's way. She greets her mother and Daryl with a smile before rummaging in the fridge for several cans of Boost for the kids still needing the calories and milk for the other three.

"Might not be enough sausage thawed," she says, head still in the fridge. "Gonna grab a can of spam."

"Got another paring knife?" Daryl asks. Sophia smiles and digs one out of the drawer on her way from fridge to grab spam to go with her package of venison sausage. She sets to work beside Shane. He's halfway through a towering stack of pancakes when he starts the oatmeal and sets the kettle to heat for Michonne's tea.

It doesn't take long to get breakfast done, even the cinnamon apples that Daryl and Carol peeled and diced. They forego the kids table for breakfast as the rest trickle in, letting the kids cluster around the dining table with Merle. The adults perch where they can, and Daryl follows his brother's antics with a thoughtful gaze.

When the younger Dixon comes into the kitchen to ease a few spoonfuls of oatmeal and apples on his plate, he leans in close to Shane. "How long's he been clean?"

Shane finishes a bite of pancake and shrugs. Andre is perched on Merle's lap, sharing a plate with the man. "Never asked, but I'm guessing since shortly after the amputation. Michonne wouldn't let him near Andre, otherwise. Her ex was an addict that nearly got him eaten."

"He's doing good with avoiding the racist bullshit?"

Shane thinks about how battered T-Dog was after that Atlanta run, and the question really makes sense. Daryl's trying to reassure himself his people are safe with his volatile brother. "Haven't heard a peep of anything untoward. Occasionally, he'll make a sort of sexist remark, but it seems more to get smacked by Michonne or Sophia than serious."

"He seems awfully attached to the girl."

"He is good with all the kids, honestly. But yeah, he and Sophia seem to each get where the other is coming from." The rescued kids were abused, but they didn't grow up in a home like that. There are times when something jolts Sophia, and Merle can soothe it with nothing but a hand on her shoulder.

"And you're sure you're good with more folks on the property?"

Shane realizes he's never spoken this long to Daryl. He wonders what changed in the past months to boost the man's confidence. "I imagine the problem would be more them with me than vice versa. I'll stay out of their hair. It's a big damn place."

Daryl finishes off his food and rinses the plate in the sink. He looks over to where Carol is sitting with Michonne at the bar, turned to face the kids. No one is in earshot. 

"Rick ain't mentally stable, Walsh. It got real bad a few weeks back, and we've had to keep him locked away. Don't know that it's safe to have him loose just yet."

Shane feels his heart sink to his feet. "What happened?"

Daryl is succinct as he relates Rick's breakdown. "Sophia says your doc here is a shrink. Gonna need him, if he's willing. We've just been making guesses."

Shane is horrified over the man's honest assessment that they had worried, all the way down to Carl, that Rick might harm Lori or the baby or both. That Rick had lost his temper violently in regards to an assault victim and a teenage boy Carl's age. 

"That change your mind about him being here? Especially with Sophia?"

Shane takes a deep breath and shakes his head. "If he needs help, he needs help. Maybe he wouldn't be in this shape if there was help available when I was losing my own mind."

"Alright. I'll use my best judgement when I tell them about this place. Might be what's needed, for Carl, for sure."

Molly's entrance into the kitchen ends the conversation, especially when she wraps her thin arms around him and just stares at Daryl. Shane runs a hand over her still close cropped hair and down her back. Daryl heads toward Carol, but he glances back, assessing eyes watching Shane with the girl. 

It doesn't take long after breakfast for Daryl, Paul, and Morgan to pack up and leave. Shane turns to Carol, who looks worried but resolute about them leaving.

"What tour do you need first? Sophia's chomping at the bit to show off."

Carol looks where Molly is still clinging, unwilling to be far from him. It's not her usual behavior, although she is the most readily affectionate of his brood. Carol turns to Sophia.

"What can we do with the kids along?"

Sophia, sweetheart that she is, runs a hand over Molly's back. "Let's take the boats up to Gloria's place."

That launches a day spent exploring by water, showing Carol all the houses on the waterside. Sophia details her plans, with Shane or the other children chiming in as needed. 

He's a little surprised that Andrea stayed back, but she and Carol were never truly close, he supposes. The blonde gets along best with Michonne for the most part, thanks to their former careers. Shane doesn't really care, as long as Andrea keeps taking his disinterest seriously about renewing their brief fling.

They drift back to the house for lunch. This meal is Eastman's turn in the kitchen. Shane isn't surprised, though, when the man separates them off to the outdoor table.

At least his smile is kind. "I'm not going to hover unless you need me to, but there is a conversation that needs to happen without young witnesses."

He shuts the door firmly, and Shane knows for at least a half hour, none of the children will be allowed near.

"I'm sorry," he manages.

"For what?" Carol meets his gaze evenly. "You saved Sophia, and rather than just do the bare minimum to keep her clothed and fed, you loved her. You encouraged her. I don't even recognize my daughter, and that's a compliment."

"I never set out to come between you in any way." He rubs at the back of his head, sighing. "I don't want to repeat what happened on the farm. She is not a possession."

"She isn't. She's a child who loves both of us." Carol smiles, and he notes absently that she's a pretty woman, now that she's not hiding it from Ed. 

"I tend to love too much," he admits. "I didn't know how to cope with losing the family I got by accident when Rick was gone."

"You avoid even asking about the baby."

"The foundation of putting myself back together was believing what Rick swore to me how things would be. The price to pay to keep him was that the baby was his. I can't dwell on what I can't have and stay healthy."

As easy as it was to say it was all about Lori and Carl and the baby, about keeping them safe, in the end, it was Rick he feared losing the most. And everytime he looked in his brother's eyes, he knew that he had. Even giving up the baby wasn't going to fix that. Losing that hope is what led to the field and words screamed out about losing the wrong damned person.

"He had no right to demand that."

Carol's words are so unexpected that he snaps his head up so he can see her face. All he sees is sympathy.

"Would you like to know about the baby?"

Shane can't find his voice, so he nods.

"You're having a daughter. Not the first, from what I see here, but another little girl for you to set the world afire keeping safe. The ultrasound estimate is that she's due at the end of February."

Shane lets that sink in. Another little girl seems like he's been promised the moon and actually going to get it.

"And Lori?"

"She's been sick more than she's been healthy. Her needing care is about half the reason Daryl took over the group. She needed a stable place to stay. But I know she deeply regrets whatever happened at the farm. I don't think Rick would have her support to keep your child from you."

He clears his throat, not sure if he can feel grateful yet, not after Lori convinced Rick he was dangerous to them. But he hates that she's sick. "Daryl said he had some sort of breakdown."

Ironic that they both snapped like brittle wood under the pressures of leadership and family.

"He did, and it was violent enough he's still confined. Some of that is his own choice now." She surprises him by reaching across the table to pat his hand. "Carl is going to be the happiest kid in the world. He talks about you a lot."

"Still? I figured after the field, he would hate me. He's doing good, despite everything?"

"Carl is an amazing kid who still takes on the world at full tilt. Children are immensely more forgiving of things you try to do wrong and stop, versus the things you actually do. He adores you like he always has."

Her words remind Shane that Carl saw what transpired in that field. Shame floods him as bitterly as it did the night it happened. How the boy can still love him, he doesn't understand.

"It's the issue I have to overcome with my daughter. She sees what I did, by staying with Ed, and that will take time to forgive. Fear is a powerful master."

"I've tried to talk to her, about it not being as easy as just walking away."

"It isn't, or wasn't, but she's also right to resent how she grow up. My choices might have been limited, but she had none at all, until now."

"I don't want to lose her," he admits quietly. "But you're her mother." Sophia, just like his unborn daughter, has a mother with more claim than he does.

"And you are the father she chose, when nature gave her one not fit for the title. It's not a choice I expected, but she chose well, I think."

Shane stares at Carol, marveling at her willingness to give him that title in Sophia's life. "So, what do we do?"

"We have the most amicable custody arrangement ever, because we aren't hung up on our own baggage. There's plenty of housing and no reason she can't have two homes, right?"

Relief floods over him, and he feels tears threaten. "No reason at all. Could even offer for you to stay here, if you like. Morgan's going to be settling next door."

That's what the man said, when he came to Shane's room after most of the household was asleep. Shane will miss him being in the same household, but he's right that their community no longer requirs them to live in such close quarters.

"Perhaps we start out to see how it works. Will Michonne be okay with that?"

"Christ, does everyone notice that but me?"

Carol laughs. "So her staying in her room and the boys in yours wasn't a polite fiction for our sakes?"

"Not at all. It's not that it's an impossible thing. I'm just not ready to be that close to someone again."

"I understand. It surprised he hell out of me when I looked at Daryl one day and Ed's ghost was no longer haunting me. Here's this guy who will never stop looking for my kid and loving these other kids rhat aren't his. I was hooked."

Funnily enough, he thinks she does actually understand. He smiles gratefully. What she describes about Daryl could reflect on Michonne, too, and all she does for the children who adopted him.

"Now, let's get this nice meal eaten, before we go get that house at the end of the road set up for its new residents," Carol suggests.

Shane finds he actually has an appetite, now that he knows Carol wants him to stay an active part of Sophia's life. He still feels the desperate unease lurking about the return of the Grimes family, but he'll face that challenge once it's actually here.

For now, he's having lunch with his daughter's mother, and all is right with his world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cohabitation offer made... I figure if offered to stay underfoot and observing, Carol's going to go for it.
> 
> Poor wee Molly and too many strangers. At least she knows who she can go to!


	26. Checks and Balances

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Daryl's people arrive, Shane is a little surprised when his first happy reunion after Carl is with Lori.

**October 16, 2010**

Morgan radios in an alert as they make the first turn off the highway toward the compound, and Shane takes a deep breath. Although the older man did speak privately with Shane earlier, to alert them that everyone was coming, he was also honest that there are potential problems. It seems to be more Greene than Grimes, so he can’t exactly raise any objections to how that family feels about him.

“Might be best for you to take the lead, Michonne,” he suggests as they do one last sweep on the larger of the two houses they’ve prepared for the new arrivals. They now know there’s a third group, but since that one has an RV, they’ll sort out space for them tomorrow.

“Is that really fair, though? You started all this, Shane.” She frowns, reaching out to touch his bicep like she’s become prone to since they first discussed anything more than friendship between them.

“If that’s the only qualification, then Sophia’s just as much in charge.”

Michonne laughs at him. “I’m about ninety percent sure she’s in charge anyway, but I don’t think she’s going to last past showing she’s alive to all these people.”

The teenager’s growing agitation is why she isn’t helping them clean the houses. Even Carol, with her need to keep Sophia in sight, got worn out by the nervous jitters and sent the girl to help Eastman and Andrea with putting in a new coop to separate the ducks from the chickens. Hopefully some banging and building will burn off energy where cleaning did not.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s as elusive and feral as Lucifer for a bit.” It makes him feel bad for Carol, who didn’t watch the gradual change in Sophia like he did.

“Hey, Shane? Gimme a hand with the generator?” Merle yells through the open door from the laundry room. He feels grateful for the older man’s excuse for him not to be part of the welcoming committee.

Michonne shoos him toward the backyard, where Shane finds Merle eying the soundproofing box Shane set into place around the generator earlier. “Didn’t figure I wanted to monkey with the actual turn on one-handed.”

With Morgan gone, the entire installation had been Merle showing Shane how to do it. It’s not a full reprieve though, because it really is just a matter of switches at this point, between the generator itself and the circuit box inside the laundry room. The sound of the propane generator is such a low key hum that they already know it doesn’t orient walkers, after testing it in town for the one they installed for the house that’s now occupied by Morgan, Andrea, and Eastman.

“Is the fridge on?” he yells to Michonne. 

“Got the whole kitchen going and just in time. Both of you get your asses out front so I’m not the entire welcome wagon.”

That order leads to them stepping off the front steps just as the first vehicle clears the gate about seven hundred feet away. The fenced property for this particular house covers five full acres, with the house on the side of the property furthest from the main road and mostly hidden by large trees up close and by a thicket of privet gone a little wild up by the main road. The shrubbery has been encouraged because of acting as a sound and visual barrier.

Shane recognizes the first truck as the one Daryl drove off this morning, and many of the others look familiar from the Greene Farm. There’s a city work truck and an RV that are new. The entire chain of vehicles comes to a halt along the road, with Daryl’s truck far enough past the driveway that the others can turn in once directed.

With all the eyes on them as they walk down the gravel drive, Shane reconsiders letting Michonne go alone. She obviously considers the possibility, because she reaches out and grabs an elbow on each of her escorts. Merle laughs, but Shane sighs.

Then all reluctance is gone, because the second he opens the gate at the end of the drive, there’s a shout of his name and Carl is running as fast as he can up the road. Shane braces for the impact of the hug when he realizes that’s what the young teenager is aiming for, holding him close. The boy sobs against his chest, but Shane’s eyes aren’t dry either.

He’s barely aware of Michonne stepping around them, going closer so she can address the others. It seems to be a quiet direction to take their vehicles up the drive, so Shane edges Carl into what was once the lawn, although she halts the RV. There’s been a lot of water shifting the driveway this summer, and it’s probably not really up to the weight of the vehicle. She points them up the road to Gloria’s place, the one with the best space to park the RV for the night.

“You’re alive, Shane,” Carl mumbles against his chest. He smoothes the boy’s hair and smiles a little. 

“Yeah, I am. All in one piece, even.”

“I saw Dad stab you. You went down, and there was a walker.”

Even though he hates the idea of showing off the scarring, Shane tugs free of Carl to lift his shirt. “It’s all healed, see? And the walker was dead, so he ended up protecting me like the one Daryl put on T-Dog on the highway.”

“I shot him. The walker, I mean.”

“Well, buddy, I guess along with Sophia, you saved me. All that herd just ignored me and walked on by.”

Carl’s fingers are calloused in a way they weren’t before when he tentatively touches the twisted flesh. “It doesn’t hurt?”

“Not really. Gets a little stiff at times, because of the way it healed, but I’m fine.” There’s time later, if the boy really wants the details. “Sophia turned out to be a damn fine doctor in training.”

“And she’s really okay? I saw Merle, but she’s not here?”

The angle Shane’s at shows him that the entire pack of kids is approaching, although he suspects that Molly and Luke are only there because the adults looking after them trekked up. “Why don’t you turn around and see for yourself?”

It takes Carl a minute, for his brain to process the changes in the once mousy little girl he played with so much back at the quarry. But the boyish hair and garb don’t fool him for more than about three heartbeats, and then he’s gone, running toward Sophia the same way he did Shane. 

“Damn that boy missed you two,” Merle observes, rubbing his good hand along the joining of his prosthetic and forearm. “Can’t speak for the rest, but I’m thinking he’s forgiving whatever happened in that field.”

Daryl and Carol return from where he crossed into the yard across the street to talk to her when she came out of the smaller, two-bedroom house. It surprises Shane when he gets a gentle shoulder pat from Carol as she passes by, obviously eager to reunite with the others she’s spent so many months with. The hunter comes to a halt next to his brother.

“You might have the best idea, staying out here,” Daryl says, sighing. “Maggie and Hershel aren’t really sold on the idea. Don’t know if Morgan told you everything over the radio, but they only came because Beth said she was coming with or without them.”

“Why on earth would she give them that sort of ultimatum?” Shane wonders. He can make out the slim figure of the one that seems to be Beth, as he only remembers one other blonde that survived the farm, and Andrea is just now making her way up the driveway with Eastman beside her. Honestly, he isn’t sure he could pick the girl out of a police lineup, because she just never really crossed paths with him. Not like Maggie or Hershel did, for sure.

“She wants to hear your side of things about what happened with Otis that night.” Daryl looks a little haunted. “Girl was out with me, scavenging, when we found some of Randall’s old posse. She helped me put them down when they were attacking a woman and a boy. Watched me interrogate them.”

Damn. Much like Sophia, Beth has already made that unenviable decision to protect others at all costs. It strikes him as a little odd that the seemingly shy younger sister is the one, but perhaps Maggie’s just been exceedingly lucky. Doesn’t seem like Daryl’s shielded the girl anymore than Shane has Sophia.

“Hate that part for her, but at least she knows she can fight for herself if she ever needs to,” Shane says at last. “I’ll talk to her anytime she wants. It might not go in my favor, but I don’t insist that it should.”

About half the group heads inside the house, but Shane’s surprised to see that one of the ones who is still outside is Lori. She heads over to a set of stone benches set around a firepit, half hidden by flowerbeds gone riot for a summer and fall with no one gardening. The way her slim figure is rounded out to the unmistakable signs of pregnancy strikes a chord with him, and he can’t stop staring even as she sits and hides most of her shape.

Daryl clears his throat. “Pretty sure that’s an offer for you to go talk, Walsh. They took Rick inside when your doc arrived with Andrea. That was our agreement that he has to talk to the doc a time or two before he sees anyone except from a distance.”

Surprisingly, Shane feels a big hand nudge him square between the shoulder blades. Merle just smirks when he stumbles forward. “Go. It’ll just be worse if you wait.”

Since there’s a very real possibility Merle might actually bodily move him down there if he doesn’t go, he sighs and nods, making his way toward the unoccupied bench. By now, the only people outside are Andrea, Beth, and T-Dog, everyone else drawn inside by Michonne and Carol. He imagines it’s a bit on purpose, but if Lori’s health is as fragile as implied, it would explain why everyone didn’t go.

For the first time since their conversation at the windmill where Lori finally admitted there was something real to their relationship, he is face to face with the mother of his unborn child. There’s no more dissembling about the baby being Rick’s, he doesn’t think, because Carol seemed very insistent in telling him about his daughter when she talked about the baby.

It's an uncomfortable silence. Neither of them seem to know how to break. Shane finds himself glancing back to the gathering of kids, despite knowing Merle's on alert. It's a second nature since the Claimers.

"Carl missed you so much." Lori looks drained by those words. "It's easy, when you're angry to forget kids don't see the same things. No matter how much we changed, you were still his favorite uncle."

"Not ever changing that, Lori, not by my choice. You know I love Carl."

"I know you do." She fidgets, cupping her hands below her belly. "I'm sorry for what Rick and I said about the baby."

"I wasn't exactly auditioning for father of the year then." He can admit that much. As out of control as he spun sometimes at the farm, he knows he would be wary of someone like he was then being around his kids.

Lori actually smiles at that. "I'm fairly sure that child services wouldn't have approved of any of us then."

"Probably not. Might have given that social worker back home a stroke, and not just us. You don't have to worry about me thinking there's something permanent between us. Had a long time to think since then, trying to get healthy here." 

He sighs and taps his forehead. "But I'll sit down with you and the doc to go over what needs to be talked about. Carol says you've been having a bad time of it, but the baby's a healthy girl."

Lori's hands move to her rounded belly as she nods. "Best they can tell, it's something called hyperemesis. We've got it mostly under control, especially since the worst of the heat eased. But yes, she's healthy. Did Carol tell you it's a girl?"

"She did." Shane clears his throat, feeling that wave of intense emotion about the baby again. "Said she is due the end of February."

"You aren't wishing for a boy instead?" While the tone is teasing, just a little, Lori's eyes are too solemn for it to be entirely a joke.

"Sounds trite, but healthy is the important part." Shane turns and motions toward the kids. "She has older siblings already. Why they all adopted me, I'm not all that sure, even now, except maybe Sophia."

Lori looks toward the children intently, most of whom are listening to Carl and Sophia and their enthusiastic reacquaintance. "Which ones?"

"The tallest boy with glasses and the younger one with his head shaved close. That's Patrick and Luke. And then Molly is the one watching us like I might disappear somehow."

"They're so skinny."

Shane relates haltingly about the conditions the children were rescued from, which still have the power to make him want to resurrect the men he killed to do it more painfully a second time. When he goes quiet, Lori has that same expression that Michonne and Carol wore: mama bear.

"My God, those poor babies."

Patrick might object to the baby term, but Shane understands the sentiment. "Sophia's the only one who knows about the baby. I wasn't going to tell them until I knew for sure there was a reason to tell them."

Hell, he didn't even tell Sophia until he had to, and he wouldn't be surprised if she told Patrick and even Duane. But like him, there's no way she would tell the two little ones, not without a certainty that the baby will be family.

"I won't keep our daughter from you, Shane. That was a poison we nearly killed us all with. She deserves to know where she comes from, as long as you stay stable. I don't think I can handle both of my children's fathers with their minds gone AWOL at the same time."

"I am doing my best there. Got a lot of checks and balances now."

"Like the woman who told us she was our point of contact for anything?"

"Michonne? Yeah. Plus Morgan, and weird as it sounds, Merle. They all three know everything, even the CDC." Shane figures Lori has the right to know that. She flinches at the reminder, and he bows his head for a minute. "That will never be me again. Even more than everything else I did, that will never be me."

Jesus, when he imagines that night… 

"Shane."

He blinks, and from Lori's concerned expression, he thinks maybe she called his name more than once.

"What almost happened that night? It's not something either of us will ever forget. But I've known you a very long time, and that wasn't you, at least not the man I've always done. You've got the psychiatrist here, right?"

"Yeah." His voice is rough and barely audible, but he doesn't look away from her intense gaze.

"That's something you unpack with him. Why it happened and how you make sure it never happens again. Not talking about it will do you no good." Lori takes a deep breath. "But I don't want to talk about it between us ever again."

"Alright." Those are her terms, and he'll abide by them.

She looks out toward the road. "Molly is looking really lost. You could call her over, if you want."

Shane turns, and she's correct. Molly isn't with the other kids anymore, but inching this way. "Molly? Do you want to meet Lori? She's Carl's mama."

The girl looks at the new boy receiving so much of Sophia's attention and finally ventures off the driveway across the grass. As he expects, she doesn't come up beside him. Instead, she stands almost behind him, his torso mostly between her and the stranger. Eastman's term for a lot of Molly's issues is regression.

"Molly Dolly, Lori's good people. Like Michonne and Carol and Andrea." Not that Molly's really warmed to the last two yet, but she stayed with Andrea on the little farmyard for far longer than expected today.

The buzzcut hair makes Molly's look more Luke's five than her own eight, especially with how her eyes dominate her features. She does manage a smile of sorts for Lori. "Nice to meet you."

As she leans her thin little form into him, Shane turns to snake an arm around her waist. It makes Molly relax and hide a little less.

"It's nice to meet you, too, Molly."

"It's almost dark," Molly half-whispers to Shane. "She should be inside where it's safer with the baby."

"We should probably all get home for now." He gives Lori an apologetic smile. "Supper's in the crockpot back at the house. Carol has extra, so she'll probably go fetch it in just a bit."

"Sounds good. Maybe I'll see y'all tomorrow." Lori goes to lever herself up, and Shane puts his free hand out automatically. She takes it, allowing the assist, and moves toward the porch before stopping. "Carl's probably going to want to stay with you tonight. Is there room?"

"Yeah. Maybe not his old room just yet, but there's space. You sure about that?"

"Sure enough I was going to send him to visit you a while without me, before I understood we were all supposed to come. I meant what I said. He's missed you desperately. I won't see him hurt like that again by keeping him away from you."

Shane hears the 'unless', but since it's one he applies to himself, he nods. "I'll let him know. Have a good night, Lori."

"You too."

He doesn't watch her make her way to the porch. When he and Molly reach the rest of the kids and suggest heading home, Carl's expression turns distraught.

"Go kiss your mama goodnight, Carl. You're included in that."

The boy beams and runs to his mother, hugging her with care before running back. Molly moves away to take Luke's hand, while Andre insists on being carried. The walk home is a happy one, filled with chattering children, and he's finally got one of his missing pieces back as Carl walks alongside him looking like Christmas came early.

There's a lot still to face and work out, but for now, he's just enjoying his family being much closer to being intact again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This may be slow going for a bit to get all of the re-meetings done, going back and forth between the two stories.
> 
> The Muse sort of hijacked the chapter. This was not what I originally outlined...
> 
> Repeat info I'm posting for a few stories so more folks see it: I've posted a rotational posting schedule in my Profile to give folks an idea of how I'm trying to space out the different series so that they don't clump up and there be two weeks between anything of a series if I only put out a chapter a day. The offspring seems to have virtual school attendance well underway now, so I'm likely to be back to more of a regular writing schedule that could be as many as two chapters a day, now that I'm not helping her navigate video meetings, what seems like seven kinds of new software, and the very entertaining fun of virtual band and PE classes...


	27. Changes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shane considers the changes rolling through not only his own relationships, but those around him.

October 16, 2010

There's a bittersweet feeling to having Carl back in his home. The boy's officially a teenager now, a birthday Shane missed just yesterday. Yet he looks at his still intact room and smiles like a shy little boy who expected all the other changes to Shane's home to extend here, too.

It reminds Shane that he will never be able to repay Morgan for his innate sense of belief that Carl would return one day. It probably didn't hurt that Duane was near enough to age that he delighted in the youthful room. They will make sure the boy gets a really good room next door.

"You gonna be okay with sharing with Patrick?" Shane asks, watching as Carl stirs his hand idly through a bin of Legos. Carl might not be here but as an occasional guest, depending on Lori's ideas and Rick's recovery, but his opinion counts.

"It would be like having a cousin, right? If you ever married before like Mom and Dad hoped."

Shane nods, feeling hopeful. "Exactly that. You just got him half grown and without a mom for your aunt."

"And the other kids." Carl is smoothing his hands across the Marvel superhero bedspread on the top bunk.

"Molly and Luke and Sophia, yeah." Emphasizing Fee's name is important here. Shane thinks Carl can easily accept the two orphans, because they have no one else. With Sophia's mother alive and well and firmly entrenched in a relationship with Daryl, that could be trickier.

Carl surprises him by grinning. "Sophia thought you were my dad when we first met. Said you were nice, and she looked a little jealous. I didn't understand it then, wanting someone else for a dad, not until I knew what her dad was."

Not who, but what Ed was. It's a perfect description of the dead man, and a sign of Carl's own growing maturity.

"It's different, I think, growing up with a dad you love and who loves you." It seemed to be for Rick and later for Carl, as far as Shane could tell. He wonders now, seeing the children grow to love him, whether his life would have been different if his mother could have trusted a man into their lives.

"I guess so." Carl frowns, hesitating. Blue eyes scan Shane, searching for something. "They said you went crazy like Dad did."

Shane clears his throat and takes a deep breath. It might be a saving grace for his psyche that his unravelling was at least hidden from Carl. "I did lose myself badly for a while. Not sure if it's the same as your dad, but it was pretty dark."

"Did you want to die?" Carl's voice quivers as Shane struggles with how to answer him. "Dad did. They tried to hide it from me, and at first, I only thought he was dangerous to others, and that's why he had to be locked up."

"How did you find out otherwise?" Taking the breathing space on answering is a little cowardly, but gathering his thoughts is important here. It feels like a tightrope he's walking in how much honesty is appropriate for Carl's age.

"Beth. I asked why she went to extra trouble to make his meals where there were no utensils needed. She explained what she did to herself, back at the farm."

Christ. Shane will be the third suicidal person Carl's experienced being around, depending on whether or not he realizes Jacqui's suicide for what it was that would make it four.

Shane pats the bottom bunk and sits himself, waiting on Carl to join him. "There was a point where I was, but it got better with time. I made a lot of decisions that I didn't feel capable of facing the consequences of. What you saw, me and your dad? That was as much on me as him."

Carl thinks it over, probably reliving what he saw in that field. "So Dad really can get better? Beth did and you did."

"If he wants to, yeah. It's got to come from him, Carl. He can't be guilted or forced into it." Shane runs a hand over his head, feeling anxious. "We've got the doc who can help. What worked for me might not for your dad."

The deep need to protect Sophia as the one good thing left to him in the world was his sole anchor to reality for a long time. Now it's the other children, too. Having friends that aren't just Rick and Lori is another safety net. Rick's may be entirely different.

"Okay." Carl leans in for a hug, nestling close like Sophia does. Shane's glad that the easy affection seems to still be there for him and Carl. "How do I help?"

Shane holds him tight. "You do what you need to be happy, Carl. Let your dad handle his recovery. Seeing you're safe and doing well, I imagine that will help. Take some time to talk to the doc, too."

"Do the other kids talk to him?"

Shane can understand the fear of being the only kid seeing the shrink, even without the stigma it would have had before. "They all do, even Duane. It's not sitting in an office and talking. It might be you helping him build a fence and sharing as you need to. Or maybe you can take him out to fish and talk in private."

Eastman is good at what he does, to the point Shane thinks the younger kids don't even realize they're being counseled. It's an approach that will appeal to Carl, feeling like he is in control of it. The kid is enough like his mother in that.

"Think Patrick will be okay with the bottom bunk?" Carl's obviously hit his limit for emotional discussion.

"I honestly think he would prefer it, but Luke is scared of the top bunk." Patrick would sleep on the floor if it made the two smaller kids happy. It's one of the issues the other teen is working on with Eastman.

"That'll make it easy. Is everyone moving around?"

"A little bit. Michonne and Andre are moving in with the girls, Luke will stay with me, and Carol and Daryl are going to borrow Michonne's room." 

Luke was thrilled to bunk with him, still babyish enough at five not to need independence even without the regression issues Molly has. When he originally offered for Carol to stay, he didn't think Carl would be allowed to stay here, so juggling became necessary. It keeps Molly mostly in her own space, too.

Carl laughs, standing before frowning. "Crap. I kinda didn't think about clothes or anything."

"Borrow something from Patrick tonight and tomorrow. We can get the rest sorted later." Shane knows this might not last, Carl staying, and even if it does, he expects it to end up part time once everyone settles in. Much like the agreement he has with Carol about Sophia, truly.

At least the boys are similar in size, even if Carl's frame is more solidly healthy. Sophia is already taller than both boys by at least four inches. Even though she wears more boy's clothing than girl's, he figures it would be weird to suggest Carl borrow anything of hers even without the height issue.

"Gotta spread showers out a little in the evenings, buddy. You see the schedule on the door?"

Shane already had a good hot water heater, but Merle showed him how to install a bigger one. They also rerouted the well water to just the sinks, installing a side system from the lake for showers and toilets. It isn't likely the well will tap out, not with the water table here, but why risk it? It's filtered, but they don't consider it completely drinkable from the lake.

"Somebody penciled me in, yeah."

Figuring the teen got used to crowded living in the other compound, Shane smiles. "Got a game night going, if you want to play. They'll probably let you pick tonight, but I'll warn you, no one beats Michonne at Monopoly."

"Do you have Life?"

Shane laughs, remembering Carl's love of that particular game. "I think we liberated every game possible, to be honest."

Life is one that won't make sense to kids like Luke and Andre eventually. He suspects it would be like playing a purely fantasy game. But for now, it soothes the older kids to have something familiar.

"Alright. I'll send Patrick to get you fixed up for a shower."

The other teen understands easily, so Shane goes looking for the other kids. He finds Luke asleep on the couch, curled up next to Merle where the older man is reading from what seems to be a textbook. He has his prosthetic off and the stump uncovered, comfortable for the evening. Daryl's watching his brother indirectly from his spot at the bar, gaze going between him and Carol and Sophia in the kitchen doing post-supper cleanup.

"Chonne took Andre and Molly down to empty the scrap buckets," Sophia tells him. 

It makes sense. Both kids are fascinated with the compost bin for the vegetable waste, and any meat scraps go into a bucket for catfish stink bait. Like most toddlers, Andre really likes that part, watching an adult make faces as the stench hits them when the bucket is opened.

"Nothing goes to waste much around here, does it?" Carol asks, drying the dish Sophia hands her.

"Ninety-nine percent of those ideas are Fee's." Shane isn't sure a compost pile or making his own bait would have really come to mind for him. "Did she show you her books?"

"She did. Did she leave any non-fiction behind at the library?"

Shane laughs, shrugging. "Not much. Mostly things we couldn't find a use for."

"Daryl did the same with Beth. Birds of a feather, these kids."

Looking at the younger Dixon, Daryl just shrugs when he sees he has Shane's attention. "Know enough to know I didn't know everything the kids needed to know. This ain't the world most of them grew up in, and just teaching them to hunt and forage ain't enough."

"Could set up a classroom with winter coming," Merle suggests, drawing everyone's attention. "But instead of memorizing their fifteenth round of the history of the revolutionary or civil war, they go over the real world skills."

"Don't we do that already?" Sophia asks, but she looks intrigued. 

"We do, but it's haphazard, and you get sidetracked into new ideas before you finish the old a lot of the time, unless it's your gardens."

The astute assessment of Sophia's need to learn everything being a distraction doesn't surprise Shane like it once would have, coming from Merle. He watches Sophia consider that, proud of her when she nods.

"Alright. Maybe you can get it started."

Merle looks genuinely surprised at the suggestion. "Pretty sure Chonne or your mama or Morgan might be better for that."

It makes Sophia shake her head, pointing at the textbook in his lap. "You read that kind of thing for fun, just like I do, and you're a good teacher. You know how to make things make sense."

At first, Shane thinks the man will turn it down. He looks uncertain in a way that seems foreign on Merle's face. In the end, though, Sophia's challenge and trust wins him over. "Alright. I'll see what I can come up with."

What makes Shane shift his attention to Daryl, he can't say, but the open affection on the man's face is good to see toward Merle. Maybe Rick and Shane aren't the only brothers who can dig themselves back out of a hole their bold personalities dug them into. He knows Michonne worries about Merle's sobriety, in the face of the Dixon family dynamic returning.

So far, though, all Shane sees is a younger brother wanting to believe in something he thinks Daryl gave up as a lost dream probably a long time ago. Both seem to have changed a lot from the men Shane met at the quarry, so he thinks it's possible they'll reinforce each other's changes instead of undercut them.

The noise of the returning trio rouses Luke from his nap, which recharged the boy's batteries as usual. By the time the evening routine plays out, Shane's watched Carl meld easily into the group of kids, since Duane popped over for a while. It makes him think of the two other girls who aren't here, three if the baby is counted, plus the other teenage boy.

He doesn't bring it up, because Michonne told him about her impromptu leadership assumption and why. Inviting Beth to game nights is probably pitching gasoline on the fire that hasn't been put out yet. But it obviously shows that something's on his mind, because Michonne ends up perched on Luke's side of the bed, running a gentle hand over the boy's back.

"What got you thinking so hard?"

"Our kids here, they have each other. Even Carl fits in like he's always been part of the group. But that leaves some of the others without the same interactions with kids."

Michonne smiles at him, giving him one of those soft looks that still make him feel undeserving of her open affection. "And while the others might send their kids down here, you figure that Beth won't be allowed, even if it's just the kids."

"Yeah. I was thinking, maybe a neutral place for all the kids. Might merge with an idea Merle had about formalizing the practical skills the kids need."

"Beth actually already agreed to join in my self-defense classes, so I doubt her family will be able to stop her from going where she likes. But having a little school house that can double as a place for them to hang out sounds good. We could convert the old shop the landscaper used."

"It would be nice to have a central location now that we're all spread out more. Hell, I haven't even met Paul's people yet."

"I hope you prepared, because I invited them for breakfast."

Shane grins, shaking his head. "It's your home, too, Michonne."

He doesn't shy away when she takes his hand where it is tucked against Luke. Her thumb rubs along his skin. "The baby's not a nebulous idea anymore, is she?"

"No." The rounded belly dominating Lori's too thin frame is still hard to really believe. "For months, I knew, but her admitting it? Letting me see Carl again? I never expected that."

Hell, he expected influence against him with Sophia, to be honest. But the group fractured and remade itself into something entirely different than the festering mess they were at the Greene Farm. Whether it's stronger or not, he doesn't know yet, but Carol and Carl certainly seem settled in themselves.

"A baby is going to be a lot different than these kids."

"I figured as much." Shane isn't sure if she's not asking more out of politeness or wariness due to their undefined relationship hovering beyond friendship but not making them a couple yet. 

"Chonne? It feels good, knowing we might be friends again, me and Lori. Stumbling together like we did was easy, because she always looked after me in her own way. Never saw me as not family because it wasn't a blood tie. But what happened once Rick was back? Friends is all we go back to."

Lori was kind and apologetic, but even if he could forgive himself, there's too much to ever be more than co-parents. That's without even considering where Rick fits in or not.

"We'll get it figured out."

Shane likes the continued sound of that 'we'. He was afraid that seeing Lori would change the slow growing care he has for Michonne. The intensity of his feelings when facing losing Lori is something he knows wasn't just about the woman herself. That fierce need seems distant and incomplete with what he has now.

But clarifying how he feels toward Michonne is probably not a conversation or change to make now, in the midst of other major changes. Instead, for once, he tamps down on impulse and just enjoys that someone cares enough to notice when something is on his mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kind of a weird chapter to bridge a few things before probably doing a small time hop for the next Furnished chapter so we get more progress than we're seeing.
> 
> Next Furnished chapter will be Daryl, Sophia, and possibly Merle related.


	28. An Honorable Goal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beth finally tracks Shane down for a conversation about what happened to Otis, but it leads to the teenager changing households after a fight with Maggie.

** October 27, 2010 **

Nine days after the other two groups arrived, Shane still hasn’t spoken to any of the Greenes or Rick. T-Dog’s ventured out to work with the other men regularly on the never ending task of securing the property lines and adding to their survivability here. It took Glenn longer, but without the need to be constantly on supply runs, he’s been working on picking up other skills.

Michonne pointed out that the young Korean’s been shadowing Eastman a lot. They both decided to leave that in peace. Whatever Glenn needs the psychiatrist’s company for isn’t any of their business unless Eastman says otherwise. Shane can’t exactly picture Glenn having the sort of dangerous psychotic break he or Rick had, so he doubts that’ll become an issue.

Not all the houses have propane furnaces like Shane’s, and even those that do, they want to reserve the propane for the worst of winter cold if they can. Although there’s a lot of propane they can collect in King County or nearby, it is a finite resource. Wood is not.

Today’s supply runs were entirely for firewood. While they can cut trees on property, the wood needs to season for at least half a year or more to dry out enough to burn. Shane’s got a trailer backed in at Karen’s little cottage, unloading seasoned firewood collected from other properties with wood stoves or fireplaces. Morgan went out with him for the run, but he’s inside installing the wood stove since the small house didn’t even have a fireplace.

It’s nearly ninety degrees today, Georgia’s October weather as spastic as always. Over the weekend, they had the temps at night drop into the damned forties, and now they’re right back up to seventies at night. By tomorrow, it could shift back the other way. He’s wishing he’d unloaded wood on one of the cooler days, because he’s about sweated through his shirt when he pauses to drink half the water bottle.

“Need some help?” 

While Beth’s voice doesn’t exactly startle him, Shane steels himself as he turns to face the young blonde. She’s standing there, looking grubby but serene. Since she was out on a hunt with Daryl, Sophia, and Carl this morning, he guesses they made it back.

“Sure, if you want. How did the hunt go?” Small talk in the apocalypse, he thinks with a hint of amusement as he tosses her a spare set of work gloves. No sense in the girl getting splinters while helping him out.

“Got another deer. Carl’s kill, so he’s happy, since it’s a five-point.” Beth reaches for a stick of firewood, dropping it neatly between the braces he put in to hold the cords of wood.

“Ah. Better than Daryl’s three-point the other day, I see.” And still a relatively young deer, which is important to their digestive enjoyment.

“Exactly. We brought back a bunch of squirrels, too.”

“You decided to escape the cleaning crew?” While Beth’s been around Shane’s house quite a bit, it’s always been for something with Michonne. She doesn’t usually venture near him, and he honors the distance. It seems her observation period is done, though, because he isn’t naive enough to not realize where this conversation will lead.

“The kids kind of swarmed down wanting to help.” 

“I think it’s the thrill of using knives.” Granted, Luke and Andre aren’t allowed yet, but Molly is getting really good at cleaning squirrels. Duane is probably capable of cleaning a deer on his own now, if he had to, and the older kids certainly able.

“Maybe. Daryl looked like he might jump in the lake and swim away. Don’t think he’s used to that much help all at once.”

With help, getting the wood that can be easily reached doesn’t take long, and Beth hasn’t really brought up the subject of Otis yet like he expected. “Hang on. I’ll dump the rest of the load.”

Beth watches as he runs the controls to tip the remainder of the wood into a jumbled pile on the ground behind the dump trailer. “Why didn’t you just dump it right away?”

“Less bending to get the wood off the trailer to stack it. I know Karen would probably get it all done with her and Noah, but seemed a bit lazy to just dump it.” Plus he’s not entirely sure how much either of them know about firewood storage, or if messing with the wood is a great idea with the kid’s asthma. “Morgan’s going to bring materials down to build a lean-to shed over the wood once we’re done.”

“Makes sense.” Beth thunks another piece in place, looking at the already complete cord set in two neat rows, each eight feet long, four feet high, and the width of the two foot lengths of firewood. Under each row, plus the ones he and Beth are working, is a set of treated railroad timbers to keep the wood off the ground. Each row is bookended by a pair of five foot T-posts Shane drove into the ground. “How much wood are you leaving here?”

Shane gives her credit for curiosity. There are more railroad ties and T-posts waiting to be set up, after all. “Three cords right here handy. It should last out the winter with a house this small, especially since they might not run a fire round the clock.”

“And that is how much wood?” She shrugs when he looks up at her. “We never really did much with wood heat back home, although I guess we would have figured it out this year.”

“Those two rows there? That’s a cord. About five thousand pounds of wood, give or take.” He thunks a piece of wood against the trailer as a pointer. “Trailer hauls a little over ten thousand pounds, officially, but the loads vary with the firewood since it doesn’t stack precisely.”

“So you’ll make another run for firewood before you’re finished here?”

“Yeah. Probably split the rest of the load with another of the houses, but I might just leave it here for extra security.”

“Because it’ll just get used next winter?”

“Exactly. Or if it’s needed elsewhere, we can move it later. Rule of thumb, though, is about three cords of wood a winter per thousand feet of heated space. Granted, this is Georgia. Might use half that if winter’s mild or blow through extra because we get freak ice storms.”

“There’s always so much to learn,” Beth mutters, eying the wood as if it caused offense.

Shane can’t help laughing just a little. “You sound like Sophia.”

“Not sure she sleeps, to keep up with everything that interests her.”

“Me either, to be honest.” Although Shane has noticed that some of Sophia’s burning drive to constantly do more and learn more tapered off once her mother is on the property. He’s not sure if it’s the reassurance of Carol being here or the fact that they have more people to help, but he’s happy to see her lose that anxiety that underlay a lot of her projects before.

They fall silent as they finish stacking the wood, with Beth handing her borrowed gloves back at the end and leaning on the trailer to just look at him calmly. Shane braces himself for whatever is coming, uncertain of the girl’s temperament other than being told that she’s open to discussion, at least, unlike her sister. All he really remembers of her from the farm is her sobbing grief after he forced the issue with the barn - and the suicide attempt.

“You killed Otis.”

The words still claw at him, a guilt he suspects will never actually fade. “I did. We weren’t both going to make it, and he wouldn’t leave me.”

“And Carl wasn’t going to live without those supplies,” Beth finishes. “Rick told us that much. Why would he have to leave you? I understand that he wouldn’t, because that’s just how Otis was, but you were in better shape than him by a lot.”

Shane realizes that he never made a big deal of the injured ankle, and grief over losing someone they knew meant the Greenes and Patricia weren’t really paying him close attention. “We got trapped in the school gym. I went up the bleachers, but Otis couldn’t fit out those windows, so he went through the locker room while I kept them distracted. When I jumped out the window, I landed wrong. Fucked up my ankle.”

She blinks, thinking that over. “And he found you hurt, so he wouldn’t leave you.”

“He was a good man, Beth, a better one than I am. But we were both going to die if he wouldn’t leave me.” He can tell she’s putting the pieces together without him saying the ugly, sinister words that the older man ended his time on this earth as a distraction to cannibalistic dead. 

“Poor Otis.” Beth sniffles a little, but Shane doesn’t move to offer any comfort. Inappropriate doesn’t even begin to cover that impulse. It’s almost worse than the scrambled eulogy he gave at the funeral. “He would be glad that Carl lived, though.”

“I hope so.” As far as Shane living, he doubts even the most forgiving man would really be glad about that. 

“Maggie and Daddy, they don’t understand what it’s like, to be in a situation like that,” Beth says, surprising him. “Daddy hasn’t really had to face the world much, and Maggie? It’s like she’s got a magical veil protecting her.”

Recalling Carol telling him and Michonne how they ended up with Karen and young Noah, Shane knows it’s easy to forget that Beth was with Daryl the day they had to save Karen and the teenage boy from attackers. “What you did was different.”

She shrugs, pushing her blonde hair back from her face. “Maybe as far as the quality of the man I shot, but what I mean is that you don’t think the same way when something like that happens. When you had time to think and plan, your first plan wasn’t to kill Otis, was it? You helped each other escape at first. Later? That was panic.”

No matter how many others have told Shane that state of mind in that situation would be entirely different than cool reason at another time, it still feels odd when people explain it to him. He’s supposed to be the cop with all the psychological training, after all, but he knows that in that trapped moment, he lost all sense of that training and panicked.

“I don’t ask for forgiveness for it. It was a cruel and undeserving way for him to die.”

“It was, but the funny thing about forgiveness, Mister Walsh, is that you don’t have to ask for it to get it. That much my parents taught me, even if Daddy’s struggling with the concept nowadays.” Beth waves her hand in general around, as if indicating the entire property. “Long as you keep going as you are, I’m forgiving, because that’s what I need to do. I also figure that’s what Otis would want, too.”

“That’s kind of you.” His voice wavers, but she just shrugs.

“There’s a reason they had all the different laws before about punishment after someone was killed, right? Considering the intent and all. Locking you up wouldn’t make any sense. From what I can see, you’ve sentenced yourself to serving the community, and your own psychiatrist says you’re not dangerous. Maybe it’s kind of me, but maybe it’s just selfish, too.”

Shane isn’t entirely sure how it’s selfish, other than the comparison helps when she thinks of having to fire an arrow into the rapist chasing Karen down. Even justified shootings fuck up a person’s brain, he knows, which is why the department always insisted on counseling after a shooting regardless of circumstances. “You talked to one of the shrinks?”

She smiles. “Yeah. I like Denise better than your guy, though. He’s got a guilty air to him, whatever his story is. Denise doesn’t mourn that she had to kill people to get her people to safety out of Virginia. Makes it easier.”

It isn’t Shane’s story to share, but he can understand Beth’s comparison of the two psychiatrists. Part of what made it easier to start talking to Eastman was his admission of graphic revenge on the man who killed his family. Granted, his victim was no innocent, but he and Shane share enough of a sense of regret and guilt to make talking easier.

“Long as you talk to someone.” As much as he hated the idea of shrinks back in the old life, nowadays, he’s thinking they must have a whole flock of guardian angels to end up with two of them here.

Beth smiles slightly, looking across the road. “Dammit. Maggie’s about to have a shit fit because I’m talking to you. I best go let her have her fit.” She pauses toward the edge of the yard to look back, even as Shane thinks Daryl’s language choices are influencing his proteges. “When you bring the next load in, I’ll help again.”

It’s as close to acceptance by the teenager as he ever thought he might get from one of the Greenes, so Shane nods. He watches as she takes her time strolling down the opposite driveway, her entire stance seeming to be set to piss off her sister. Maggie’s still on the porch, hands on her hips, and glaring between where Shane’s standing and her sister. Feeling like it’s not his fight to witness, he heads in the house to help Morgan with the wood stove.

Somehow he’s not surprised when they leave, that they pass Beth at the curve in the road, a heavy canvas bag slung over one shoulder. Shane slows next to her. “Need to walk it off, or want a ride?”

Although she shows signs of having cried, Beth seems like she’s bleeding off anger more than tears as she studies first him and then Morgan. “I’ll ride. Think Daryl or Carol is at your place?”

“Probably. With fresh venison, they’ll fire up my grill for supper.” The cooks will send shares to Rick’s household, but after the first introductory breakfast, it’s not unusual for Paul and his people to join everyone in turning Shane’s deck into an outdoor dining hall.

Beth climbs the side of the trailer, perching against the raised side as Shane pulls off, careful not to dislodge her. He exchanges a glance with Morgan, who sighs.

“Family is having some growing pains, I think,” the older man says. “She wants to grow up, and they don’t know how to let her. Good thing Daryl and Carol have that spare bedroom, right?”

Hell, considering he’s seen Carol request and get furnishings for that room, he thinks the couple knew this was coming. “Better that than completely solo,” he responds. Not that they would allow that here, but in the old world, a fight like the Greene sisters are enduring would probably have Beth tramping off somewhere entirely new.

At least right now, they’re less than half a mile from each other. In time, the anger and hurt will blow over, and the sisters will likely forgive each other. Shane doesn’t like the feeling of guilt that he’s part of the spat, but he’s also aware from Carol that the two have been butting heads for a while as Beth explores young adulthood. Maybe this will spur Maggie to see Denise or something. Girl’s got to have a ton of grief and frustration saved up, with all she’s experienced since the world ended.

But that’s not his decision to make, so he tucks away the worry. He doesn’t have to fix everything, and he trusts that Daryl and Carol know the girl well enough to keep Beth’s best interests in mind. 

He feels some of the weight on his shoulders lift a fraction, though, because if a teenager who obviously cared for Otis can see something redeemable in him, it’s easier to believe what he’s being told. Becoming the man who deserves to have survived when Otis didn’t is an honorable goal, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Maggie is getting the grumpy whump at the moment. I feel a little bad, since I don't plan on any stories that really let us see inside her head, although I suppose the sisters will reconcile for Beth's story to let her be seen there. 
> 
> Pacing the two stories forward here, since I doubt y'all need chapter upon chapter of daily life. Keep in mind that small progresses would be going on "unseen", like the children slowly healing and Rick's slow progress toward recovery.
> 
> I don't think I will push this story long enough for Judith's birth, as I intend to have Shane and Michonne settled together by Christmas in the story. That said... rather than have it as a side note of someone else's story (like Merle's or Beth's), I may do a short story as a "special" one to lay out the birth and reactions in multiple POVs. Probably from Lori's POV, which will retroactively report Rick's recovery process.


	29. Untold Numbers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After seeing the baby's ultrasound, Shane makes some changes in his life.

**November 10, 2010**

Gloria's garage is now an infirmary for the entire small community. What was once a typical two car space is now unrecognizable except for the fact they left the door workable for moving equipment in and out in the future. Insulation and a heated coil floor added over the concrete makes the room amazingly warm for less energy output. Morgan, Merle, and Daryl's combined ingenuity is impressive with construction.

Shane eyes the hospital bed on one side and standard exam table on the other. If he didn't know this was a garage, he could almost see it as any other medical space. But he isn't here to admire the equipment or renovation effort, is he?

When Lori enters from the main house where she was visiting with Denise, he eases away from the counter and sink installation and smiles nervously. The young doctor graces him with a gentle smile, belying the fact that Shane knows she fought alongside the other survivors in her group to get Enid and Gracie out of Virginia safely. Hershel follows them, not speaking to Shane, but seeming content enough to be in the same room.

At twenty-five weeks pregnant, Lori looks further along. She's put on weight recently, according to Carol, but none of the medical folks are resting easy yet. Shane is surprised when she hugs him, returning the embrace automatically. The baby moves between them, protesting being squished. "Feeling okay today?"

She just snugs her face into his shoulder for a minute before moving away with a smile. "Yeah. Today is a good day."

Since she doesn't elaborate, instead using the small stool to step up to get onto the exam table as Denise pulls the ultrasound machine over. When Lori raises the blousy maternity shirt up, Shane recognizes why everyone worries so much. If she looks too thin while clothed, seeing her swollen belly and too sharp hip bones drives the point home. She never had weight to spare, and now, that's even more obvious.

Not for the first time, Shane curses his carelessness in those summer days at the quarry. This is the first time he truly understands how risky this pregnancy is, and why Lori considered ending it. As Denise squirts gel on Lori's belly, he reaches out and takes Lori's hand and squeezes lightly.

It earns him a distracted smile, but Lori's attention is mostly on Denise and the machine. "You ready for this?" she asks him quietly.

Lori has seen the baby before, since Hershel has been using ultrasound regularly to track the baby's growth. But today is the first time Shane gets to see the baby live on screen. He is nervous as hell, but he also can't wait. "Yeah, I think so."

"Look at that. She's sucking her thumb," Denise comments.

Shane realizes he wasn't truly prepared for this moment. Seeing printed ultrasound photos is nothing compared to seeing his daughter flutter on the screen. Her tiny hand is distinctive, thumb firmly in her mouth as Denise says. His heart constricts in his chest, and it is a little hard to breathe.

Even more amazing is what he hears when Denise flips a switch on the machine and the steady whomp-whomp-whomp of the baby's heartbeat fills the room. Jesus… instead of reminding him of the clinical, unyielding machinery of Rick's monitoring equipment, this sounds like hope concentrated as a steady music. Lori finally looks at him, gaze understanding. "It's a beautiful sound, isn't it?"

"Absolutely." Shane is already a father, he knows, but this is such a different experience. It tugs at him the same way though, the same feeling as knowing the older kids look to him as their safest place in the world.

"Everything is measuring right on track. With four weeks of steady growth, we can hold off on any more ultrasounds until the third trimester." Denise smiles brightly, pressing the button that makes the machine's printer whirl busily.

"That's good news," Shane replies gruffly, voice catching as he still tries to process what he is seeing.

"It is. But I can still use the fetal doppler, right?" Lori asks, rubbing her hand on an ungelled section of skin.

"That's fine. It's important to stay reassured and calm. We're getting close to the third trimester, and the farther along we can get you, the better."

"Is premature labor that likely?" Shane asks, wondering at Denise's matter of fact statement about pregnancy milestones.

"It's hard to say. Extremely premature, not so much. But I doubt we'll make it to full term," Denise answers. "But as long as we make it to the end of January at least, we should be okay."

The idea of a premature infant in a world with no NICU is terrifying, but that's the worst case scenario. Everyone says Lori is doing better now, and Shane understands that the psychological pressures easing for Lori are a large part of that. "Whatever you need, we'll make sure you and Hershel have."

Eastman is their standby, but he admits obstetrics was never his strong suit. It isn't Denise's either, but she seems more committed to it. Shane thinks Lori prefers a female doctor for this anyway, considering she had one for delivering Carl.

He lets go of Lori's hand to accept the small slips of paper from the doctor, finger tracing the outline of the baby's nose. "Takes after mama here, thankfully," he jokes.

Lori laughs, looking pleased as she resettles her clothing after Denise wipes away the gel. "She won't get hers broken multiple times in a year, we hope."

Shane hopes so, too, but he doesn't see this child growing up with something to prove the way he did. "Is it safe to talk to the younger kids yet?"

Denise and Hershel exchange a look, seeming to consult without words. Finally, the old man sighs. "I would wait a while longer. Perhaps tell them at Christmas. That'll be the thirty-two week mark."

"Okay." Shane can't protect the older kids, because he was right that Sophia told Patrick. The teen would have sussed it out himself anyway. But should something happen, Molly and Luke will have a harder time reconciling it than Shane's teenagers will.

A jaw splitting yawn from Lori makes them all laugh. "She was bladder dancing last night. Has her days and nights backwards."

"Well, feel free to switch yours," Denise advises. "No one will begrudge you extra naps."

Shane is a little surprised when Lori frowns. "I wanted to sit in on Merle's class."

"You know he would go over anything with you separately, right?" Shane tells her.

Merle's small shop turned classroom doubles as a gathering place for the various groups. Sophia's suggestion of a skills classroom is turning out to be a wonderful one. The redneck is a natural born teacher, apparently, especially for survival skills. They don't just stay indoors, either. Yesterday, Shane found him and his students outside holding a fire starting class.

"You think he would?" 

A little surprised that Lori seems interested in the foraging class when she rarely seemed curious back at the quarry, Shane nods. "It's not hands on yet. Start now, and you'll be ready for the woods by spring."

When Hershel says he'll walk Lori home, Shane leaves them to join one of the teams going out for more firewood collection. They probably have enough for two winters now, but it'll just rot away uselessly out there. Might as well collect it as insurance, especially if they find more survivors and need to expand into the last two houses.

The ultrasound photos ride in his shirt pocket all day, a small reminder that not everything that came before Sophia saving him in the moonlight was a mistake. In a different world, maybe he and Lori could even overcome their differences. But with the scarring on his chest as a daily reminder, it wouldn't be healthy for either of them.

Having Michonne living with him is a daily example of the healthy relationship he needs to have, as a man and as a father. There are no skeletons between them to ignore or tuck away. It is ironic that the first time he truly lives with a woman, they aren't even sleeping together by his own insistence.

That thought is heavy on his mind as Shane showers that night. When he gets out of the shower, facing the mirror is no longer a twisted mix of memories of shaving his head after Otis or the raging infection after Rick. Pressing on the scarred flesh reminds him of how little sensation is left there, and for the first time, he wonders how women deal with massive changes like mastectomies. 

His mother had a double mastectomy, he remembers. As a teen, it wasn't something he wanted to focus on. Like any boy, Shane didn't want to consider she had breasts to begin with. But now? How did she feel when she had to face her body looking so drastically different? His scarring isn't even on that level, yet still makes him uneasy to face.

"Shane?" His name is followed by a sharp rap of knuckles on his bedroom door before it opens and closes. He never shuts his door except if he's changing or showering, so he would know it's Michonne even without the voice. None of the kids would venture in.

"Bathroom," he calls out, wrapping a towel around his waist just as she comes into sight at the door. "Andre asleep?"

The assessing, interested look Michonne sweeps over him is flattering to his ego. Her slow smile, even more so. But she meets his eyes at last. "All of them are, actually. Long day with early hunting trips."

It was an early rising day for most. Each of the experienced hunters took a pair of teenagers out in a different area, everyone on the lookout for turkey. Daryl, Carl, and Sophia encountered the only ones today, bringing back two.

"Before long, Beth, Sophia, and Carl will be training adults themselves," Shane tells her. It had been a little odd, having Beth following him and Duane, but the older teen lived up to Daryl's quiet bragging on her skill. Shane would never guess she only learned in the last few months. They didn't bring back a turkey, but Beth bagged a deer with that bow of hers.

"Might be an interesting way for me to learn." Michonne smiles, leaning against the door frame. "Was coming to tell you that Merle is begging off tomorrow's hunt. He's got another raw spot under his prosthetic."

Shane pauses in reaching for his toothbrush. "That doesn't seem to be letting up. Maybe we need to make a run to some prosthetic lab? Bet we could find something that would suit."

As Michonne considers that, he cleans his teeth, wondering at the easy domesticity of discussing the next day's plans like this. It sets him at ease in a way nothing has in a long time.

"I bet the university has some kind of program. We would need a big group to raid in Atlanta, though, even just to Georgia Tech."

"Call up a meeting tomorrow and plan it out. Maybe combine the trip with something else we need in the city?"

Michonne nods thoughtfully. "I'll snag Aaron and Daryl tomorrow."

Errand handled, Shane thinks she will leave, like she usually does, but she seems content in watching him get ready for bed. She's already done that herself, dressed in pretty pajamas with her dreads covered. Reaching for the shirt he draped across the toilet and its precious cargo, he plucks the ultrasound photos out and shows them to her.

"Makes it seem so very real, doesn't it?" Michonne says softly. She sounds a little wistful. "Did you hear the heartbeat?"

Nodding, he slips by her, ignoring the frisson of want that shoots through him, feeling her that close. "I forgot how jackrabbit fast they are. Rick always babbled about it with Carl."

Michonne takes the prints to the nightstand and slips them inside for him. "Different knowing and hearing, right?"

She keeps her back turned, giving him just long enough to swap towel for the loose pajama pants he sleeps in since he ends up with one or more children sleeping in his bed by morning most days. "It is."

Her eyes are on him again, still with that patient interest she doesn't bother hiding. "Know what I was thinking about most of today?" he asks her.

"Baby names?" she asks, arching a brow.

Shane laughs, shaking his head. "Like the ladies in my life are going to let me do more than have a final veto." Not that he minds. He's just so happy to be a welcomed part of the baby's life, he can't imagine being fussy over what she's named.

"Then what?"

Stepping closer, right into her personal space, he grins, hoping he hasn't lost his knack with that particular charm. "This."

Ever since it popped in his head how damned happy he was just living under the same roof earlier, his mind keeps drifting to this. Kissing her isn't the instant thrill of touching a new woman, intent on a night or three with no commitment. Instead, it's an intoxicating moment of layering emotion upon emotion as she parts her lips easily for him.

Christ, Michonne tastes like nothing he expected, and he knows the groan he makes sounds more like horny teenager than grown man. She winds her arms over his shoulders, urging him closer and deepening the kiss. He can feel her smiling as they kiss.

Shane isn't sure how they end up sprawled on his bed, losing himself in kissing her. He doesn't think he's made out so contentedly ever in his life. But oxygen does become a priority, so he raises up and smiles down at her.

"That was worth the wait." 

Michonne shifts her hips under him as she grins slyly, and he groans as it reminds him just how worth the wait it was. His body feels aflame with desire, something he hasn't had a flicker of in months. Honestly, he almost worried about the lack of physical interest, even after Eastman assured him it was perfectly normal after the level of trauma his body recovered from.

"It certainly was," Michonne replies, her tongue swiping at her kiss swollen lips. "How far are we taking this tonight?"

Now that he's kissed her and understands how she responds, a very insistent part of him wants them naked five minutes ago. Due to the thin material of her pajamas, he can feel enough of her to imagine what it would feel like to be skin to skin. Shane dips his head, pressing his lips to where her pulse is fluttering in her throat before he answers.

She trails her fingers along his spine, making him shiver and move against her. "It's okay if we keep waiting."

That makes him roll, changing position so that they're side by side and not pressed so closely that all his thinking is concentrated below the waist. Shane strokes his palm along her bare arm, loving the silky smooth feel of her skin over deceivingly powerful muscles  
"I don't have a good track record with this."

Michonne surprises him by laughing softly. "Neither do I. We'll figure it out, I think."

If anyone can help untangle the mess he made of himself in the past six months, Shane knows it will be Michonne. With her lying here next to him, the idea of her leaving to go back across the hall makes him uneasy.

"I want to wake up next to you," he admits quietly, taking her hand and kissing the palm. "And not just tomorrow."

Her smile turns wicked even as she kisses him, so he's not surprised at all when she pushes him to his back to slip astride his thighs. After she takes both of his hands and wraps them around the bars of the headboard, what comes next isn't quite what he expected. Shane can't miss the feel of her laying a trail of kisses along the rippled scars. It's not the first time she's touched them, but her lips seem like a much deeper declaration than fingertips.

Michonne doesn't stop there, spending time to kiss and trace her fingers along all his exposed skin. It's such a reversal of seduction for him that he feels nearly drunk on her touch. When she gets up from the bed, it's all he can do not to whimper at the sudden lack of warmth.

The click of the door being locked explains her exit from the bed. She sheds her pajamas as she returns, leanly muscled body proudly on display as she teases him by slowly easing away his pants. He's hyper aware of her touch now as she maps out his thighs and rises higher.

"Keep that up, and I'm not lasting much longer." Shane's voice has gone so deep he barely recognizes it. Honestly, he hates to interrupt, reveling in the feeling of someone exploring him so intently for the first time he can remember.

There's no description for her smile except triumphant. But Michonne passes over the most sensitive part of him to stretch out and lay over him. Her skin is warm against his as she kisses him, tongue chasing his.

Letting go of the headboard with his right hand, Shane fumbles for the nightstand. She captures the wayward hand and puts it back. "We're good," she explains against his lips, "for at least another year."

Trusting that she knows the reliability of whatever birth control she's using, Shane grips tightly as finally, they're joined together. Already on a razor's edge of sensitivity from her play, he fights for control, breathing deeply. Once Michonne begins to move, he regrets his agreement to keep his hands where they are.

"You are so fucking beautiful," he tells her. It sounds damned sappy and cheesy, but he doesn't think he's ever had such an intense reaction to just looking at a woman's body. He wants to touch so badly he craves it.

"Admiring from afar working for you?"

"No." A tilt of her hips as she moves changes the angle enough to crack his self control completely. "Yes! Goddamn, more, please."

Right now, his hands are staying wherever she says, because if she stops, Shane just might die of needing more of her. It's apparently the right answer, and even more so when he intersperses her name with begging her not to stop. For the first time since his college days, he finishes before his partner, body arching under hers with the force of his climax.

When his vision clears, he decides to hell with being good and flips them, sliding down her body to plant his face between her thighs. Michonne must have been on the threshold herself, because he barely has time to register the bitter tang of himself before she's bucking against him. The way her thighs clamp down on him, he's going to owe her an apology for beard burn in the morning, but he fucking loves it.

When they've both caught their breath, Shane eases up the bed to stretch out against her, tangling their legs together and cupping a hand under the soft curve of her left breast. She makes a sound close to a purr as he idly explores what he couldn't earlier.

"We should probably shower," Michonne suggests after a few content minutes lying together.

"Already showered," Shane pretends to grumble.

"You turning down a shower with me?" she asks, slipping out of the bed and sashaying her way to the bathroom.

"Hell, no." Second shower it is. 

If the shower finishes off the hot water, they no longer have a house bursting at the seams, and exploring every inch of her gorgeous body with soapy fingers is damn near heaven.

But even better is spooning behind her, breathing in the clean scent of her skin, and knowing there are untold numbers of nights falling asleep beside her ahead of him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This may hop right over the M rating, but I don't want to rate the whole story as E for one chapter...


	30. Brothers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The addition of the Grady newcomers pits Sophia against Rick, but also lets two once brothers start seeing their way home to each other.

**November 18, 2010**

It takes less than twenty-four hours for a conflict to arise about the community taking in twenty new people. Shane supposes he shouldn't be surprised that it involves Rick and Sophia. Something between the two was inevitable, but he had thought that it would take the psychiatrists to get his girl in Rick's presence. Instead, it's her innate sense of defending others.

The younger kids summoning the adults prepping the closest empty house for new residents is almost not needed. Once outdoors, the shouting is indistinct but the voices carry. "Molly! Get Carol and Daryl!" Shane directs as he sets off at a dead run once the girl stammers out that Sophia and Rick are fighting.

He isn't alone in the run, because Michonne is faster than him. Others working at the house trail behind then, less motivated than they are to intervene. When they hit the end of the driveway, at least it hasn't advanced to the point of Sophia using her gun.

But that's probably because she's unleashing a furious hailstorm of golf ball sized rocks from the gravel driveway, while Rick wisely takes cover behind the outdoor kitchen he's been building. Lori and Carl are on the porch, and Patrick is kneeling in the driveway further up, checking over one of the new kids who is sprawled on the gravel.

Snatching Sophia up, Shane isn't surprised by her rage fueled strength. Just as she attempts a mule kick on her restrainer, he barks out, "Calm your shit down and talk to me, Fee."

It's like he flipped her switch, because she goes from screaming curses at Rick that show a decidedly Merle Dixon influence to hanging limply and sobbing. Rotating her in his arms, Shane lets her cling to him as Michonne crosses the yard toward Rick.

"What in the hell did you do to set her off, Rick Grimes?" The fury in her voice isn't heated, like Sophia's. It's the stuff of arctic ice, and Rick looks ashamed enough that Shane thinks this is about to get ugly. While Sophia doesn't avoid the house at the end of the road as religiously as she did at first, she almost always goes with an adult buffer, and Rick has faithfully honored her wish for distance. So what changed so drastically today?

"He didn't like Noah coming up to the house with me," Carl volunteers from the porch, where he's got an arm wrapped around his mother. He and Lori both have been crying. "Grabbed his arm to make him leave."

Glancing to the teenage boy being helped up by Patrick, Michonne sighs. "Are you okay, Noah?"

The boy nods, gaze going a bit wide eyed to Sophia. "Just a skinned knee and palms, ma'am. I tripped where the sidewalk joins the driveway. I think Sophia thought he pushed me."

Daryl and Carol have arrived, among others, so Shane passes Sophia gently to her mother. "Going to take her down to the lake until Doc is free," the woman murmurs, causing Shane to nod. When Sophia goes without an argument, Shane feels his heart ache for her. Others step forward to hustle Patrick and Noah away, and Shane's grateful to see Merle carrying Molly while Morgan has Luke. 

Getting to his feet unsteadily, Rick peers over the brick kitchen at Shane where he's still standing in the driveway. It seems all the Grimeses are crying, because Rick's face is tear wet, too. "She said…" He has to stop and clear his throat. "She said she had to cut you. Screamed about infection and smells worse than walkers and hoping she would die if you did."

Shane rubs his hand over his face, feeling an upsurge of guilt for what Sophia experienced during his illness. It is a wound in her mind that may never heal. Eastman says, and Denise agrees, that she directs the anxiety in constructive ways, between her gardening and medical training. But that doesn't erase the fear she still carries.

"Jesus," Daryl says, voice gruff. "It was that bad?"

Reluctantly, Shane nods. He may have been mostly unaware of the worst of it thanks to the good pain meds Sophia stuffed down his gullet, but the smell of the infection? He remembers that, still sometimes gets flashes of it randomly if he gets a muscle twinge in the area. Worse than walkers might be an exaggeration, but at least it provides some reference point to the idea of the putrid decay that tried to take hold.

"Wound went septic not long after I found Sophia. Systemic strep infection on top of the sepsis in the wound itself. Sophia excised the infected flesh with a razor blade in an old caulk scraper." Shane shudders, remembering all too well, ghost pain flickering across his senses. "We didn't have the kind of painkillers appropriate for doing it."

Rick's flinch at the terse explanation makes Shane realize the man was hoping Sophia exaggerated, as kids sometimes do. "M'sorry," the slim man mumbles, moving slowly around the brickwork. It seems like the effort is exhausting, and suddenly, Shane can't stand the waiting for the shrinks to tell them it's time, not anymore. Unlike Sophia, he has a lifetime of good memories of the man he called his brother.

When he makes his way across the yard and sweeps Rick into a crushing bear hug, it's returned with equal force. "I'm so sorry," Rick keeps repeating, burying his face in Shane's shoulder. The lightweight material of his henley shirt is soaked as his brother sobs against him, as hard as Rick did the day Mama Grimes died four years ago.

Shane meets Michonne's worried gaze as he blinks back tears of his own. "Gonna get him inside."

She nods, dreads shifting around her shoulders, and turns to handle the others who came to the children's frantic summons. He's confident she'll handle any explanations for those less informed in the saga of Walsh and Grimes, like the two new cops assessing the interaction. Leading Rick to the house is as easy as looking after him always has been. 

Underneath all the pain and hatefulness they visited upon each other at that farm, the trust is still there, somehow, surviving despite the Pandora's box of sins they unleashed. It amazes Shane, because even if Rick doesn't know how close he came multiple times, throwing that wrench was unmistakable in Shane's intent. Only Shane's last second horror at what he was doing changed the trajectory just enough that he didn't brain Rick with the heavy tool. He doesn't intend to tell Rick his gun was unloaded that night in the field. It's a layer of guilt Rick doesn't need, and Shane prefers him to keep the tattered idea intact that he was defending himself.

On the couch in the living room, Shane blinks away tears as Lori and Carl take a seat in a recliner opposite, the boy perching on the arm. "That's why the scars are so bad, isn't it?" Carl says, his voice subdued. "Because it isn't just a stab wound."

Shane nods, uncomfortable with the attention from Rick and Lori once Carl speaks. "How bad is it?" Rick manages to ask.

As much as he doesn't like showing it to anyone other than Michonne or the kids, Shane untucks his undershirt and eases it and his henley up. Below the left pectoral, the damage is wider than the initial two inch stab wound. In fact, nothing of the original wound remains, all carved away under Sophia's razor blade. At one point, before the tissue knit itself back together, glimpsing bone wasn't uncommon. The musculature is naturally sparse over the ribs, and now he has less.

He doesn't share that the doctors in the group assure him he'll always have pain from nerve damage, much the same way Rick probably does from the gunshot wound. Certain movements don't flex the same as before due to the drawn tight scar tissue. But he's alive when he shouldn't be, so to Shane, that's all that matters.

"Jesus." Rick looks away as he chokes out the word, but Lori doesn't, staring as if she is requiring herself to memorize it. Shane finally eases his shirts back down, unwilling to stay on display. Lori's hands twist in the loose fabric of her maternity shirt. She seems at a loss for words, and Carl slides an arm around her thin shoulders.

"Sophia is constantly spending time with one of the doctors." Carl's subdued tone makes Shane nod, and the boy continues. "Because she wants to know how to do things like that better."

Unsure if it is a request for input, Shane nods again. "She hasn't stopped studying. Doc says she'll evolve into a fine doctor one day."

The teenager squares his shoulders, his jaw setting in that determined way that reminds Shane more of Lori than Rick. "I'm going to ask for lessons, too."

Whether or not it will last, Shane doesn't know. But he thinks it will be good for Sophia to have another youngster learning alongside her for as long as it does. Her experiences and personality combine sometimes to isolate her a little, making her older than her years. Even Patrick and Duane only get ao far through her shell, as much as she seems to genuinely care for them. 

"I'm sure Doc won't mind," Shane tells him. An added bonus is more time for Carl around the shrink, and he doesn't miss that Lori seems to share that thought.

When he turns his attention back to Rick, his brother is studying his hands. They're no longer the fairly soft hands of a man who became a cop to serve the public when he didn't have to. Nicks, scars, and callouses from his building projects are a map of slow progress in rebuilding who Rick is. After the outdoor kitchen had come a storage shed, with Rick painstakingly teaching himself the skills needed.

Looking up at last, Rick faces Carl and Lori. "I'm sorry about earlier. I knew there were new people here, and I should have been prepared to see one of them."

Carl sighs. "You were telling Mom she had to stay here. That's not right."

"What?" Shane is confused, since things seemed to have escalated beyond just Noah being unknown to Rick.

Rick ducks his head. "Too many new people. I didn't want Lori going to help today."

While he noticed Lori's absence this morning, Shane just assumed she was feeling poorly. But he focuses on Lori, who sighs. "I think it may be time for me to stay somewhere else," she admits quietly. "Me staying here may be keeping his paranoia active."

Christ Almighty. Rick seems to shrink in on himself further, but most telling, he doesn't object or argue Lori's point. "Okay. There's space with Denise's group, if you are willing to stay with her."

Because despite the fact that he can rearrange to allow Lori to have Michonne's old room, that's an option probably as unhealthy for everyone's mental health as her staying here seems to be. It also won't hurt to keep Lori close to a medical professional, if she's moving away from Hershel. The downstairs room that was once Gloria's sewing room is being rearranged today, intended to house someone from Grady. 

"Lori moving out is going to leave space here for some of the newcomers. You gonna be okay with that? Or should we switch houses? Have T-Dog, Karen, and her boy move here, and you and Hershel move across the street." Shane reviews the list Michonne was studying this morning, deciding Rick might ease into seeing other cops around best. Maybe the two female cops, since they've asked to stay together.

Shane still doesn't want to think about why they requested not to sleep alone, yet both stated firmly they aren't a couple. No one would care about that here, but it's the other reasons two women coming from an environment where cops turned rapist would team up even at night that makes his gut roil even though the men are dead.

"Why make Hershel move?" Lori asks, looking puzzled. "Couldn't Rick share with T-Dog?"

The original idea of T-Dog taking the couch or sharing with Karen's foster son didn't last long. But apparently that's a little tidbit of change not widely noticed. Shane smiles wryly. "T-Dog seems happy with Karen as his roommate."

"Oh." Lori actually smiles, seeming happy about the couple.

"Think you can manage getting to know the two female cops, Rick?" Once upon a time, Shane wouldn't question women's safety around his brother. After Daryl's description of the breakdown Rick had, with it focusing on a woman and boy Carl's age, it's a legitimate question he has to ask. It's also possible the women might refuse, and something else have to be arranged. Moving Karen into the same house with Rick isn't an option.

"I would like to meet them first. They probably would require the same." Rick sighs and drags a shaking hand through his hair. "Was it as bad as Glenn said, there at Grady?"

"Far as we can tell, yeah. They've had it rough, despite being a little more protected by their uniform." Hell, it might be worse, in a way, for the two women, who probably compound personal fear of the situation with frustration that they couldn't protect their wards.

"If they're willing to try, I'll meet with them." Rick looks at Lori and Carl. "I'm sorry I keep having setbacks."

That launches Carl into action, the boy coming to hug his father fiercely. "Don't apologize for that, Dad. Long as you keep trying."

Smoothing Carl's hair, Rick kisses the top of his son's head. "You tell your new friend I'm sorry, okay?"

Carl nods, not releasing Rick yet.

"Rick?"

Shane waits until his brother is looking at him. Up close, the physical effects of Rick's mental health are obvious. He's lost weight he couldn't spare, and there's a haunted look to Rick's expression that goes beyond today's revelations, he thinks. Reaching out, Shane lays a hand on the other man's shoulder and squeezes gently.

"I am sorry for all that I did that led us here," he says, struggling for the right words. Nothing seems adequate for his part in their personal disaster. "None of us got here alone, and I couldn't escape my own head for a while. I understand days like today."

Shane's been blessed that paranoia no longer seems one of his issues, but Doc suspects that is because he has slowly added positive aspects back to his life. By contrast, Rick is still adrift. His marriage is beyond salvation, his only son spends most of his time with other people, and the continued restriction on him moving around the property limits his daily work.

Rick's response is to move his hand from Carl's hair to cover Shane's hand with it. It's a gesture they often exchanged over the decades. "You should go check on your kids," Rick says softly, managing a smile. "They'll be worried, all things considered. I'll be okay."

Looking into his brother's eyes, Shane believes for the first time that they can retrieve that sense of brotherhood with time and hard work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a bear of a chapter that fought me pretty hard... Ugh.
> 
> Sophia was always going to explode somehow at Rick. Luckily for him, she aimed for a child's revenge instead of an adult's. Shane forgiving Rick is key to her being able to.
> 
> I'm starting to see an end for this one, too. There will be at least a couple more chapters, at least one from Sophia. But probably no more than four. Then we'll bring in Merle's story, so we'll still see all our folks growing older and wiser.


	31. Progress

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sophia takes the first step toward forgiving Rick, with added help from Beth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last Sophia POV chapter...

** December 10, 2010 **

Sophia walks into the kitchen from the outside deck and hears Shane chuckle as he looks up from his empty plate to see her. "Well, that's certainly a new look. You eat breakfast with your mom?"

Running a hand through her now orchid pink hair, she grins. "Just be glad I talked Beth out of the cotton candy color. And yes, I ate breakfast already."

Shane passes her a cup of hot tea from Michonne's pot on the table as she sneaks in a morning hug after hugging the three younger kids first. "You do realize you're going to have to figure out how to dye their hair, too, right?"

Taking a sip of the tea and enjoying the spicy scent and taste of the chai, she smiles at Molly, Luke, and Andre as she slides onto a barstool. "Beth has a whole box of the little jars from her last supply run."

"Is it permanent?" Michonne asks, watching Andre wiggle happily.

"Semi-permanent. As long as they pick something that works on darker hair, it should wash away in about six weeks."

"And yours?" Shane eyes the very bright color of her hair. 

"Beth had to bleach it first. It's gonna be a little pale." Like bleach blonde pale, but it was fun, doing their hair together. "Kind of like Spike from Buffy. Beth's is turquoise colored now."

Michonne just laughs. "Well, it's not like there's a dress code for school to follow anymore, right? Might as well have fun."

Sophia nods. "Beth said that her school once suspended a boy for dying his hair pink, so a bunch of girls showed up with the same color and didn't get suspended, so they had to let him back for an unfair policy."

Beth hadn't been one of them, as much as she'd wanted to be, because her family was so strict. Maybe her father was a lot nicer than Ed, but Sophia was a bit selfishly glad when she finished getting her friend's hair to the exact shade of aqua blue she wanted. Beth is Beth, not some doll with no opinions.

Daryl and Mama didn't say a word when they were sorting the jars and deciding colors. Mama even gave them a couple of tips about the dye, but she turned down joining them. Apparently dye might not be safe for the baby.

"Some schools were known for trying that," Michonne notes. "Andrea probably has a whole host of stories like that from working as a civil rights lawyer."

"I'll bet she's glad not to have to do a job like that anymore." Sophia can't imagine anyone caring much about what people look like these days. Finishing her tea, she sighs, looking up at Shane. "I want to go talk to Rick today."

It's something that she's been thinking about a lot lately. As nervous and wary as Carl's father still makes her, she can't deny that he's stuck to the terms of being here. Sophia thinks she can be fair in return, and it can't be very good being stuck to the same five acres and single house.

"Did you discuss it with Doc?" Shane asks, but he doesn't look worried. She knows they've made peace with each other, which is why she can try her own olive branch.

"Yesterday after supper. He says there's no reason Rick couldn't mingle with everyone, and that Michonne could come see him about any additional issues he foresees." Like the fact that Sophia doesn't want Rick anywhere near her people on a supply run. She doesn't see anyone wanting him doing that soon, anyway.

"Did you tell your mama?" Shane's starting the breakfast dishes, so she goes to help. It's her second round of dishes this morning, since she helped Beth, too.

"Yep. She suggested that either you or Daryl go with me." There might have been a slightly teasing commentary about keeping her away from rocks and projectiles, but she isn't going to flinch away from losing it on Rick. He deserved it.

Shane passes her another dish to rinse and dry and nods. "I need to take a look at the back of the property there to see about more root cellars before the ground tries to freeze. You can help me survey after you talk to Rick, if you like."

Dishes don't take long, so they're donning jackets and heading for the opposite end of the road. Shane reaches out to sling an arm over her shoulder, and she enjoys the impromptu hug. "Still excited about the newest baby?"

Sophia grins up at him. "Have you seen how happy they are? It's contagious. I always wanted a sibling, and this year? I got a whole pack of them, plus some still pending."

"Not too many changes too fast?" 

He looks so concerned that she smiles to reassure him. "It's fine. They're all good changes."

They really are. Her mama is the happiest she's ever seen her, and Sophia's glad that the wished for baby never came with Ed around. There wouldn't be all this happy glow, watching her mama and Daryl sitting together on the couch at night, him reading, her knitting, and Daryl sneaking his hand over to rest over the belly. He has this constant look of someone who just encountered a miracle, which she likes.

Shane and Michonne have a lot of the same comfortable vibe together. It's like they've been together for years instead of weeks. But her mama's baby easier than the complications surrounding Lori's baby. No matter how happy everyone about the baby itself, the circumstances are weird on the best of days and Lori's health worrisome. The cool part will be sharing a sister with Carl.

Considering Carl, she frowns, realizing he wasn't at breakfast, and neither was Patrick. "Did Carl stay with his dad last night?"

"Yeah. Him and Patrick both actually." 

Sophia stumbles, a little surprised, and Shane catches her. "That's new."

"It is, but Patrick said it makes things feel more normal to stay over with Carl, too." 

Well, if it makes Patrick feel good, then she's all for it. "Sometimes it feels a little like that with sharing a room with Beth." Having a solo room seemed selfish when she doesn't sleep there every night, and Beth seems to like being the older girl of their pair. Molly doesn't mind her being away, still sharing a room with Luke and Sophia both, so she isn't alone with Sophia gone and Patrick sharing with Carl.

"Not too weird with her being so much older?" Shane asks as they start up the driveway to Rick's house.

"Nah. She's used to an age gap. I think Maggie is a lot older." And if Sophia thinks to herself that it's what it would be like not being the oldest sister, that's her private thoughts.

At the door, Shane goes to knock, but the door is opened before he can by Carl and Patrick, both smiling. "Are we late for something?" Carl asks.

"No, we came down to see your dad." 

Carl's eyes widen a little at Sophia's words, but he steps onto the porch to make room for them to step inside. Rick is getting to his feet from where he's finishing breakfast. Hershel and Amanda are there as well, but there's no sign of the other cop or Glenn and Maggie.

Sophia resists the sudden urge to step behind Shane once Rick's attention is on them both. Taking a deep breath, she manages, "You shouldn't be stuck to the one property. It isn't fair, and it probably isn't healthy."

Rick studies her for a moment, before he glances to Shane. She doesn't mind him checking, because even now, she really prefers to avoid eye contact. He's too earnest, too begging for forgiveness, and it makes her uncomfortable. How to explain it is hard, except it draws an uncanny parallel to Ed's apology stages. 

But today isn't about forgiving him. It's about the next step to making sure Carl's dad gets better like Sophia's did.

"That would be much appreciated," Rick says at last, the pleading aspect of his expression fading to a careful politeness. He must have seen something on Shane's face.

She nods, swallowing hard and taking an involuntary step closer to Shane. A warm hand comes to rest between her shoulder blades, causing her to react with that easy confidence that she associates with being around Shane now. Rick actually smiles, seeming pleased by the interaction.

At least he seems happy for them. It's unexpected, as Sophia didn't figure Rick would want happy things for Shane so soon after they hurt each other. "Just no supply runs," she tacks on. "Or only with your people." She can't help that her fingers tangle in the closest belt loop of Shane's jeans, like a much younger kid.

Rick doesn't miss the idea that Shane is hers, not his. "I think it'll be a few more months before I would trust myself on runs. I'm sure there's plenty of things to do around here."

"Like help with new homes and plumbing and root cellars?" she asks. He likes to build, she hears, and there's so much building to be done.

"All of that, yeah. I hear there's a list you keep."

Sophia ghosts a smile his way. "It's a long one." Her watch beeps, reminding her she's due for a lesson with Denise. "I've got to go, but Shane has the list. And he needs help doing a survey here." Since she can't help, maybe Rick can.

Accepting Shane's hug without any care for their audience, she heads for the porch. Looking back one last time, everyone is watching her go, so she closes the door quickly. Taking a deep breath, she goes to start her day.

It doesn't take her long to realize that Rick is being kept working in areas she won't be for the day, but when she and Beth go out to run the trotlines, she eyes the older teen for a long moment, letting the motor go idle before they reach the first line. Beth turns from her spot in the front of the boat, arching a still blonde brow. Neither of them was brave enough to dye their eyebrows.

"Can I ask you a question?" Sophia knows that Beth's seen Doc, too, not as often as Sophia does, but enough for her to take note. But this isn't something to ask Carl, and she doesn't know the other boy that came with them well enough.

"Of course." Beth swings her legs over the seat in the boat so that she's facing Sophia instead of twisted around. She has one of those open faces that makes her seem friendly even when she's grumpy. As her sometimes roommate, Sophia is familiar with the less sunny parts of Beth's personality, but even those are so much brighter than she ever feels.

"Do you trust Rick?" She needs a younger person's perspective, less laden with how things should be and more with how they are.

To her credit, Beth doesn't answer right away. She tucks a stray lock of bright turquoise hair behind her ear and sighs. "I trust that he's a good person trying to get better after he got overwhelmed. It's sort of like Merle. He was an addict in Atlanta, and he'll always be an addict. That part of his mind will always be fragile. Rick's is less addiction and more mental health, but I think the comparison is fair."

Sophia thinks that over, nodding as the parallel fits. She understands that Shane had the same sort of mental break, making a lot of odd decisions that led up to the really scary ones she didn't witness. Rick leaving her? It was one of the cracks before Rick broke.

Before she speaks again, Beth does. "I think Merle is his Otis, not Shane, if you ask me."

That makes Sophia confused. "He didn't kill Merle."

"No, but his actions led to Merle being left for dead, and he didn't go back for him right away. Shane didn't start out wanting to hurt Otis, and he tried not to, but then everything went wrong. If you watch Rick if Merle is around, he can't quite look at him, especially now that he has that new hand."

Letting the slight waves rock her a bit, Sophia knows she hasn't noticed that, but she tries to avoid paying attention to Rick. "He can forget what he did to Shane, because it's hidden. But Merle's hand isn't," she ventures.

Beth smiles. "Exactly. And family? You hurt family and expect forgiveness. Strangers? It's never a guarantee."

"You forgave Shane." It's a puzzle Sophia's never been brave enough to ask about yet.

"Because I don't think he's a bad man. He did a horrible thing when he was desperate. Since then, he's done all the good he can to make up for it, right?"

"Yeah." Thinking of the Claimers, Sophia shudders and gets the boat back underway. Would what she did be a bad thing for good reasons? Sometimes, it isn't just Rick she's angry with anymore, but herself.

Beth watches her even as they work the lines, finally reaching out when they reach the dock. No one's come down to meet them yet, so it's quiet as the older girl snags her wrist. "I heard you tell your mama about what you did to that man that put the kids in a cage. We met men like that one day, me and Daryl. I shot two of them."

"Did you kill them?" Because Sophia killed Lou. Most of the time, she's okay with that, but then she remembers he had a name, and he was Molly and Luke's uncle, and she wonders if deciding in the heat of the moment is always so horrible on second guessing yourself. She thinks Shane could answer that question, if she would risk asking.

"No, but I wanted to. Daryl did, after he questioned them." Beth is quiet enough after that the only real sound is the lake against the dock. "I was angry he didn't let me, afterward. I think maybe that anger is harder than guilt to let go."

When Sophia thinks of Lou, anger usually is a more dominant emotion, just like it has been with Rick for so long. But there's guilt, too, that she killed an unarmed man who had no chance to defend himself. That's easier to set aside, it's true, just like her guilt over being too confused and scared to follow Rick's instructions is something she can shove away.

"I don't like being angry. It makes me feel like Ed." 

"I don't think you could ever be like him. Be angry when you need to." Beth lets her go to climb out and moor the boat. "Just don't let anger be everything you are, because that's when you break like Rick did, or Shane."

Once the boat is unloaded, Sophia surprises Beth with a tight hug. "It's awful to say, but I'm glad you fought with your sister and moved out," she mumbles against Beth's jacket.

The older girl just giggles, fluffing her hair like Shane does. "Long as you promise not to tell Maggie, me too, most days. It's nice to be the big sister for once."

With that, Beth moves away to climb the path with their fish, leaving Sophia to grin like a silly thing all the way through putting away their gear. After thinking it earlier, it's nice to know Beth doesn't just see her as a necessary pest to live with Daryl and Sophia's mama. She really has been blessed now to make up for all the years with no siblings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're curious on the hair colors, check out Manic Panic's Mystic Heather (Sophia) and Atomic Turquoise (Beth).
> 
> I know I said maybe 4 more chapters last chapter, but it may be as few as one, depending on how the next one plays out.


	32. Now He Knows Better

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Christmas Eve leads Shane to consider understanding of the concept of love and family in a way he never used to do.

December 24, 2010

In May, when everything started going wrong, Shane still held faith in the government to somehow come out on top of the situation. Time and experience proved him wrong, that the massacre in the hospital wasn’t an aberration, and combined with his personal life spinning out of control, he lost focus of any real future being possible. Even in the quarry, if you suggested a day like today has been - and tomorrow will be - was going to happen, he would have laughed without any humor involved.

Instead, he’s settled at the table in his own house, surrounded by kids, playing a noisy game of Mouse Trap with the younger kids while the older ones somehow roped Merle and Michonne into playing Monopoly. Andre is enchanted by the colorful game, although his ability to play rests entirely on being in Shane’s lap. Morgan, Carol, and Daryl are amused onlookers between both games.

He never did any extensive decorating for the holidays at his house. It seemed a bit wasted, with only him really seeing it. Back then, he preferred the livelier Grimes household and all the Hallmark channel style decorations Lori specialized in. His grandmother’s decorations stayed safely stored away once she passed away.

Grandma Jean would be thrilled to see they’re not locked in the dark anymore. Once the community as a whole declared to do a Christmas celebration, without the overtones of religion, Sophia’s in depth nosiness of all his possessions resulted in boxes of old fashioned decorations being unearthed. It isn’t just those gracing the big Leyland Cypress, but plenty of homemade ornaments from the five kids officially living with Shane and Michonne, plus Carl, Beth, and Duane. Morgan may officially live next door, but the familial bond developed before their community grew is still there.

Keeping his promise to Sophia feels good. She’d done the honors in cutting the tree down at the Christmas tree farm that sparked him to say they’d do that this year, back when he had no idea his guardianship would become fatherhood. On the Greene farm, he thought Lori’s pregnancy would make him a father in a way he wasn’t for Carl. How wrong he was that it was the baby that would make that change for him.

Duane wins the game of Mouse Trap, politely high fiving all three of his younger competitors. “Can we have hot chocolate?” he asks, looking between his father and Shane. “The spicy kind Shane makes.”

Chuckling at the special request, Shane dangles Andre out to Duane to take before making his way into the kitchen. Chocolate is one of those things they won’t have forever, but for this first Christmas of giving the kids some sort of normalcy of traditions old and new, at least they have it now. As he gets started, Sophia and Beth exchange a conspiratorial look that makes Daryl mutter, “Uh, oh, what are you girls up to?”

“We should go caroling. If Shane makes enough hot chocolate, we can deliver it along the way, too” Sophia suggests. The Monopoly game is quickly forgotten as the other kids chime in agreement.

“I’m game if everyone else is,” Shane says, checking the pantry for supplies. He won’t be able to make it all with fresh milk, but there’s plenty of Nido in the shares they take for their household from the group supplies. “But I’ll need more pitchers for delivering hot chocolate.”

That ends up with Beth and Sophia dashing across the street, and Duane and Carl heading next door. Shane ends up with Carol helping him babysit quantities of the hot drink that use stock pots instead of saucepans. The kids are all bundled up, because with dark comes temperatures that are actually pretty frigid for Georgia for once. It’s enough that keeps the kids speculating about snow, especially as heavily overcast as the sky is. No one has the heart to remind the younger ones they’re probably too far south and east for it to be possible in December.

The kids pick up extra carolers once what they’re doing gets out, until soon all the kids in the community are part of the procession. They even sing their way back up the street, carefully including the new doublewides brought in and set up on one of the larger properties. Shane and Michonne perch on the stairs up to the deck for their official caroling visit. It results in happy, tired kids as everyone finally disperses home. 

The last two out on the deck are him and Sophia. She smiles at him, and he marvels at the difference in the girl who risked the dangers of a moonlit night to save a man she barely knew. Everything he has now, he owes to her bravery and selflessness. Sophia sees something of his emotion in his face, because she wraps her arms around him in a firm hug. “Love you, Daddy.”

That’s a new thing for her, not using his name, and probably the best damned present she could give him tonight. It seems fitting that his first child says it to him before any of the rest. “Love you, too, sweetheart. Kept my promise about Christmas, didn’t I?” 

“You’ve always kept your promises to me.” Blinking up at him, she smiles even more brightly. “And you always will.”

Sophia presses a kiss to his cheek before trailing behind her mother for the night. She’ll be back in the morning, after presents and breakfast across the street. Carl’s with his mother for the night, although Rick and Lori both have an invitation for Christmas lunch. With the weather almost guaranteed cold, this particular holiday meal is divided up by houses. No one will lack for good food and nice company.

Without Carl and Sophia there, Shane isn’t surprised to find that all the kids congregate in the room with the twin bunk beds. Andre’s been sharing the room with Luke, Molly, and sometimes Sophia since Michonne moved into Shane’s bedroom. Patrick’s just borrowing Sophia’s bunk for the night, watching over the chattering children with a content expression that makes Shane realize how far the boy’s come since his rescue.

“You missing out on any traditions, Patch?” he asks, leaning against the top bunk while Michonne reads to the younger kids all piled onto Andre’s bunk.

Patrick shakes his head. “Not really. We just did the usual stuff, like we did tonight.” He leans in close. “You won’t forget my stuff for their stockings, right?”

Shane drags him in for a hug as well as keeping the conversation quiet. “You sure you don’t want those bracelets to have your name on them? You worked hard.”

The leather lace up bracelets were a carefully kept secret that Shane knows the older kids will puzzle out, maybe even Molly, but probably not Luke. One of the houses had a leatherwork craft room set up in a spare bedroom, and out of all the kids, Patrick seemed the most interested. The teenager spent a lot of trial and error learning to use the tools, with his workshop set up in a corner of the workroom in Daryl and Carol’s basement. Shane knows Merle’s offered some tips and suggestions, but the older man assures him that Patrick’s pretty much self taught.

Patrick returns the hug fiercely. “They’ll be less afraid of them, coming from Santa than a person.” 

That explains the finicky laces on each decorated and beaded leather piece. No buckles or snaps to resemble the dog collars the children once wore. Santa is a bit of magic the kids deserve to keep, so Shane nods.

Michonne’s finished up the story, the younger kids giggling over that Grinch, so Shane does his rounds for bedtime. Molly’s bedtime hugs are becoming more routine, more like the other two small kids, and it makes him rejoice at how well she’s healing. In time, Luke will probably forget everything that came before being part of Shane’s family, but Molly? She’ll remember, but at least she’s starting to heal. Luke and Andre are as content as ever, their sturdy small bodies delivering hugs and sloppy kisses to him as enthusiastically as to Michonne.

Following her to the living room, he finds she’s got the box for the stockings out of its hiding place. One by one, they fill each one with a variety of small items, finishing with fruit and candy. Daryl led a team far enough south to find one of the satsuma groves two days ago, and they’ve kept all the citrus fruits hidden from the few smaller children in the community. There aren’t a lot of happy Christmas memories from either Dixon brother, except that one: oranges in a stocking, from a time when the citrus fruit wasn’t something that was available year round in many varieties in the supermarket.

“Did you get stockings like this as a kid?” Michonne asks as she hangs Andre’s.

“Yeah. Always about half full of fruit and nuts, plus that package of Life Savers that always looked like a book. My mama couldn’t always afford a lot of presents, but the stocking? That was always something that happened.”

“How old were you when she died? You always talk about your grandmother to the kids, but not her as much.”

“Fourteen. She passed right after Halloween my freshman year of high school.” Shane readjusts the extra presents under the tree. Although the kids don’t need much, it just meant being creative with gift giving. Their household has the majority of the kids still young enough to benefit from the Santa tale, which for some reason means everyone wants to help out. It’s like the absolute line of people willing to help Aaron with his daughter. The existence of kids so small just gives everyone hope.

Michonne slips her arms around his waist from behind, leaning her cheek against his shoulder. “What would she think of all this?”

It makes Shane smile. “All the kids or you?” he asks, turning so that he’s face to face with her.

“Both, I suppose.” 

“I think she would have loved seeing me with a big family. She did the best she could as a single mother, but it was just her and me and Grandma Jean for so long.” She wanted a lot more for Shane. He hadn’t particularly wanted to go to college, but it was his mother’s dream, and he felt he owed it to her memory. There were a lot of paths closed to her for having a child so young.

Kissing Michonne, he smiles at her. “As for you? I think she would be rather delighted to have you around to keep me on my toes.” What they have together would incur a lot of open prejudice from many, but Shane doesn’t think either his mama or grandma would have cared, not so long as he was happy.

His answer pleases Michonne, and finishing up in the living room gets delayed by a series of leisurely kisses, both of them enjoying the quiet of the room. Only the fire in the wood stove makes any sounds with all the children fast asleep. Eventually, they do the rounds, checking that the house is secure and the fire sufficient for the night.

The kids are all asleep, even Patrick, who sometimes reads if he can’t settle to sleep. Shane detours to tuck Molly’s comforter back over her. All the boys are much less restless sleepers, but he still takes a moment to consider Michonne’s question all over again. Yes, he’s absolutely certain his mother and Grandma Jean both would have delighted in seeing him with a house full of children.

When he gets to his bedroom, Michonne’s already ready for bed, although her intent is clear. Locking the door, he steps to the foot of the bed, letting his eyes scan across all the bare skin. “What, not letting me unwrap my present?” he teases as he starts stripping away his own clothing slowly.

“Maybe I’m watching you unwrap mine,” she replies, smiling slowly. But she reaches under her pillow and clips a gold foil Christmas bow to one of her dreads. “Better?”

“Hell yeah.” Crawling up the bed, he hovers himself above her, close enough to feel body head, not enough to actually touch. “This gonna be our Christmas Eve tradition?” he asks huskily.

She hooks a leg over one of his, a slow slide of contact between them. “It’s a good one, isn’t it?”

Planning for many future Christmases together sounds perfect. He lowers his body inch by inch, extending the moment between them until finally he’s framing her tall form with his. Still he doesn’t kiss her, though, just smiling down at her even from where he’s propped on his forearms.

Arching a brow, she tangles her fingers in the hair at the nape of his neck, now long enough to curl again. “What are you waiting for?”

“Just thinking that saying I love you doesn’t seem to be enough words for what I feel right now.”

Michonne smiles slowly, and she’s the one that initiates the kiss, raising up to meet his lips. Once she’s enticed him to a series of long kisses that finish awakening his body to its close contact with hers, she finally lets him up for air. That smile is still there. “Maybe those three words don’t seem like enough, but they’ll work as a start. I love you.”

He’s said those words before, in the heat of desperately not wanting to be left alone. But this woman isn’t going to leave him angry and confused about what she means to him. He knows, and it’s not moments like this one, as her thighs grip him and urge him closer. The heat of her is right there, so tantalizingly close. He smiles in return, even as he finally brings them as close as they can possibly be. “I love you, too.”

Four months ago, Shane wanted to die in a remote field and selfishly make sure the hell his mind descended into was shared completely with the person he cared about most on the planet. Tonight? He knows he’s already found his redemption, not just in the woman in his arms, but in the family they’ve built around them.

Thinking he understood love and family drove him crazy. Now Shane knows better, and it’s all he’s ever dreamed of.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter, folks. 32 chapters for a story I was hesitant to post, thinking that Shane after the field would be so much harder to empathize with than the Shane of season one. It started the phenomenon of my Lost Deputy series, and many more Shane stories are still waiting to be told. Hopefully others will be inspired to tell them as well.
> 
> Merle's story will turn up soon. What family will our third lost boy find? 😉


End file.
